Modeling Climate and Management Change Impacts on Water Quality and In-Stream Processes in the Elbe River Basin
Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research, Post Box 601203, Potsdam 14412, Germany
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Yingkui Li and Michael A. Urban
Water 2016, 8(2), 40; https://doi.org/10.3390/w8020040
Received: 14 September 2015
/
Revised: 12 January 2016
/
Accepted: 25 January 2016
/
Published: 28 January 2016
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Resource Variability and Climate Change)
Eco-hydrological water quality modeling for integrated water resources management of river basins should include all necessary landscape and in-stream nutrient processes as well as possible changes in boundary conditions and driving forces for nutrient behavior in watersheds. The study aims to assess possible impacts of the changing climate (ENSEMBLES climate scenarios) and/or land use conditions on resulting river water quantity and quality in the large-scale Elbe river basin by applying a semi-distributed watershed model of intermediate complexity (SWIM) with implemented in-stream nutrient (N+P) turnover and algal growth processes. The calibration and validation results revealed the ability of SWIM to satisfactorily simulate nutrient behavior at the watershed scale. Analysis of 19 climate scenarios for the whole Elbe river basin showed a projected increase in temperature (+3 °C) and precipitation (+57 mm) on average until the end of the century, causing diverse changes in river discharge (+20%), nutrient loads (NO3-N: −5%; NH4-N: −24%; PO4-P: +5%), phytoplankton biomass (−4%) and dissolved oxygen concentration (−5%) in the watershed. In addition, some changes in land use and nutrient management were tested in order to reduce nutrient emissions to the river network.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
Elbe river basin; water quality modeling; in-stream processes; nutrients; SWIM; climate change impact assessment; ENSEMBLES; management change impacts
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
MDPI and ACS Style
Hesse, C.; Krysanova, V. Modeling Climate and Management Change Impacts on Water Quality and In-Stream Processes in the Elbe River Basin. Water 2016, 8, 40. https://doi.org/10.3390/w8020040
AMA Style
Hesse C, Krysanova V. Modeling Climate and Management Change Impacts on Water Quality and In-Stream Processes in the Elbe River Basin. Water. 2016; 8(2):40. https://doi.org/10.3390/w8020040
Chicago/Turabian StyleHesse, Cornelia, and Valentina Krysanova. 2016. "Modeling Climate and Management Change Impacts on Water Quality and In-Stream Processes in the Elbe River Basin" Water 8, no. 2: 40. https://doi.org/10.3390/w8020040
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
