Objective
The efficient and sustainable management of water resources is dependent on water storage, most often in the form of reservoirs. This is especially true indensely populated areas such as Europe. Much of the water used in lowland are as originates in the mountains as rain and snow, and is trapped as it flows downstream. Along with the water, sediments are also trapped in reservoirs, reducing the effective storage of water and sometimes causing water quality problems. The supply of sediments to reservoirs is determined by a complex mixture of terrestrial and climatic features that make sediment yield estimation difficult. This project brings together experts in modem field techniques, GIS mapping, soil erosion, sediment transport and hydrological modelling to address the problem of reservoir sedimentation and the effects this will have on water resources management under changing environmental conditions. Both future climate and land use change scenarios will be considered and their implications for water resource management and reservoir operations assessed. Three contrasting field areas, where sedimentation is a problem, and base data sets are already available, have been selected for this study. - Northumbrian Water area in North-East England (Fontburn and Cow Green) - the Aragon catchment in the Spanish Pyrenees - the Enns catchment in the Austrian Alps.
In the first two areas the local water authorities are acting as sub-contractors of the project, in the third a statement of support from the local water-power company has been obtained. In all three areas the study will identify sediment source areas and their connectivity to the river network, through GIS mapping and the use of GPS and tracers such as caesium-137. This information, together with meteorological and river discharge, data will be used to model current sediment delivery patterns to the reservoirs. Modelling will be done at two levels: fully physically based and distributed modelling of small focus areas (using SHETRAN) and sediment budgets for large catchments. Particular attention will be paid to the role that extreme events play in sediment supply and delivery. The project will then continue to consider the implications on sediment supply and delivery of changed climatic or land use conditions. The possibility of changing river regime will also be included here. Finally the implications of such change on reservoir operations, catchment management and possible future dam construction will be assessed. The research strategy developed in this project will be published as a protocol for future studies.
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.
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologysedimentology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental scienceshydrology
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringnatural resources managementwater management
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
DH1 3LE DURHAM
United Kingdom