Karlsruhe Institute of Technology A view to the south over Passaúna reservoir reveals different land uses – forest, agriculture, and settlements – in the direct vicinity. (Photo: Tobias Bleninger, KIT) Reservoirs are indispensable for global drinking water supply. To protect them from silting, overfertilization, and pollution, anticipating monitoring of water quality is required. A Brazilian-German consortium led by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has now developed user-friendly measurement and monitoring methods that are particularly suited for regions with limited data availability. Among others, project results confirm the big effect of reforestation in the reservoir catchment. In case deterioration of water quality is detected at an early stage, countermeasures can be implemented in due time and endangered reservoirs can be preserved much longer. Environmental models help monitor and assess inputs of substances and water quality. Models used so far, however, have required huge data volumes and have been associated with a high technical expenditure. This makes them unsuited for use in regions with a limited data availability. Within the framework of the interdisciplinary research project “Multi-disciplinary Data Acquisition as a Key to Globally Applicable Water Resources Management” (MuDak-WRM), Brazilian and German researchers developed user-friendly and generally accessible monitoring methods, models, and measurement technologies over a duration of three and a half years. For calculating the water balance, i.e. the difference between water uptake and water discharge, and substance inputs from the catchment area, satellite data were used. “We obtained reliable results with a few data only,” says Dr. Stephan Hilgert, geo-ecologist at KIT’s Institute for Water and River Basin Management (IWG), who coordinated the project.