Project description
Tackling hydrological changes and chemical weathering in the Alps
The Alps, the ‘water towers of Europe,’ contribute significantly to the accumulation and supply of water in the continent. However, each year they are faced with floods, summer droughts and landslide events. The Mediterranean basin, meanwhile, stands to lose between 20 % and 30 % of precipitation by 2100, putting water resources at risk. What the future holds is unclear. The EU-funded Hydro-ALPS project seeks to offer new insights on climate projections and strategies for water resources. It will examine hydrological changes by measuring oxygen and silicon isotopes from diatoms extracted from lacustrine sediments and chemical weathering of the crystalline bedrock. Project work will help local areas to better understand climate change and encourage stakeholders to adopt new water resource strategies.
Objective
Across middle Europe, the Alps cover four sub-climatic regions and play a major role in accumulating and supplying water to the continent. Famously called as the water towers of Europe, they host most of the headwaters of the rivers Danube, Rhine, Po and Rhone. Located in the Mediterranean basin, the southwestern Alps are known to be particularly vulnerable to flood, landslide events and summer droughts. Precipitation is expected to decrease by 20-30 % in the Mediterranean basin by 2100 threatening water resources. However, large uncertainties remain on future precipitation regimes at a local scale. Climate models spatial resolution do not integrate regional climate heterogeneity and models are calibrated on a short temporal observations window (the last century mainly). The Hydro-Alps project aims at providing new perspectives on the history of past local hydrological changes that needs to be considered in order to improve climate projections and strategies to water resources issues. Hydrological changes and chemical weathering will be studied in the southwestern Alps for the pre-industrial period and over several millennia. Valuable information can be provided by microalgae called diatoms which are accumulating through time in the sediments of alpine lakes. They build a cell wall in silica (SiO2) which records lake water chemistry during the shell formation. The project will rely on measurements of oxygen and silicon isotopes from diatoms extracted from lacustrine sediments used as tracers of local hydrological conditions and chemical weathering of the crystalline bedrock. This innovative approach will provide new information on mountainous past climate variability by combining isotopic tracers on same sample and new perspective about long-term changes in the Mediterranean climate. Altogether, the Hydro-Alps project will improve our understanding of climate changes at local scale and will help stakeholders to adapt water resource strategies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistory
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrymetalloids
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
75794 Paris
France