Preliminary study of the human activities and perception on the groundwater conservation in lowlands of Semarang

This paper aims at investigating the human activities and perception of the residents in lowland areas of Semarang city regarding the groundwater conservation. As the first step, classifying and rating land use in the study area is conducted as the interpretation of human activities. A map of human perception using the adapted Protocol Perception Monitoring is then configured to evaluate the deviation between the expected and observed behavior of the community in an integrated ecosystem. The result of preliminary study shows that about 68% areas in lowland have score 8 (built-up area, irrigated field crops), 25% has score 7 (industries and reservoirs), 1% has score 5 (plantation), 3% has score 2 (non-irrigated field crops) and about 3% has score 1 (forest, park and open areas). It means that more than 90% lowland areas in Semarang city have been intervened by the human activities. Based on the result of the perception mapping, it is found that there is a high deviation (about 40-90%) between expected and observed behavior in critical areas, including the understanding of area situation, utilization of groundwater and water resources (wells/PDAM) as well as the community comprehension of government regulation on groundwater conservation