GIS representation of hydro-geological and chemical data for international waters Prespa Lake shared between Albania, Macedonia and Greece
Emanuela Kiri graduated from the University Polytechnic of Tirana, Albania in 1999 and has successfully passed her MPhil Viva at Wessex Institute with a thesis entitled “GIS representation of hydrogeological and chemical data for international waters Prespa Lake shared between Albania, Macedonia and Greece”. The external examiner was Dr Duncan Whyatt from Lancaster University and the internal examiner was Prof Carlos Brebbia.
The thesis consisted of a detailed study of the whole Prespa zone, in three countries, but focused mainly on the hydrogeological aspect including the hydrochemical characteristics, which is a branch of hydrogeology dealing with the study of the underground waters’ chemical composition. A GIS application was developed for the purpose of creating a hydrogeological map of the region at 1:50,000 scale. This map was copied from the Albanian Geological Survey archive and later underwent processes in the Geographic Information System (GIS) program, where data according to the map’s profile was added. The objective of the map was to represent the hydrogeological data of the region. Each polygon of the map represented a specific geological age with a corresponding table containing the hydrogeological data of geological deposits which represented different hydrogeological characteristics. Other data, such as chemical tables of groundwater data on water pollution by anthropogenic factors, was also shown on the map. The reason for setting up the hydrogeological map in the GIS program was to utilize the program’s map features.
A hydrogeological database was created and inserted in the map. A large quantity of the graphic material was constructed based on chemical data (taken by the archive of Albanian Geological Survey, Hydrometeorology Institute and the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Albania, Greek and Macedonian archives of the homologues institutions) of the region’s waters using AquaChem 5.1 (Stiff Diagrams). The AquaChem5.1 program was used to process all the physical-chemical data available for both Prespa and Ohrid watershed. (Stiff Diagrams were based on these data.)
This project was sponsored through the NATO programme for Security through Science entitled “Sustainable management of the international waters – Prespa Lake”.
Wessex Institute