ILM-Track

The project aim is to globally quantify the contribution of indigenous peoples' land (IPL) to regional rainfall. Evapotranspiration, as controlled by land cover and land use, is the source of precipitable moisture originating over land. At the grid scale, this moisture can be tracked from its source to its sink, hydrologically connecting regions through tracked atmospheric moisture flows. The research objective is to quantify the volumes of water originating from IPL which contribute to rainfall over land, either locally or elsewhere. This will be achieved by 1) mapping indigenous lands globally in a gridded format compatible with moisture tracking models, 2) running moisture tracking (Utrack and/or WAM2layers) to model the volumes of moisture flows sourced from IPL, 3) quantifying the amount of these flows which remain on land as recycled terrestrial moisture and 4) developing policy relevant metrics and indicators of the contribution of IPL to moisture flows based on these analyses.