A Tri-national program for estimating the link between snow resources and hydrological droughts
OPEN ACCESS
Loading...
Author / Producer
Date
2015-06-11
Publication Type
Conference Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
Citations
Altmetric
OPEN ACCESS
Data
Rights / License
Abstract
To evaluate how summer low flows and droughts are affected by the winter snowpack, a Tri-National effort will analyse data from three catchments: Alpbach (Prealps, central Switzerland), Gudjaretis-Tskali (Little Caucasus, central Georgia), and Kamenice (Jizera Mountains, northern Czech Republic). Two GIS-based rainfall-runoff models will simulate over 10 years of runoff in streams based on rain and snowfall measurements, and further meteorological variables. The models use information on the geographical settings of the catchments together with knowledge of the hydrological processes of runoff generation from rainfall, looking particularly at the relationship between spring snowmelt and summer droughts. These processes include snow accumulation and melt, evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge in spring that contributes to (the) summer runoff, and will be studied by means of the environmental isotopes 18O and 2H. Knowledge about the isotopic composition of the different water sources will allow to identify the flow paths and estimate the residence time of snow meltwater in the subsurface and its contribution to the stream. The application of the models in different nested or neighbouring catchments will explore their potential for further development and allow a better early prediction of low-flow periods in various mountainous zones across Europe. The paper presents the planned activities including a first analysis of already available dataset of environmental isotopes, discharge, snow water equivalent and modelling experiments of the (already) available datasets.
Permanent link
Publication status
published
External links
Editor
Book title
Volume
369
Pages / Article No.
25 - 30
Publisher
Copernicus
Event
26th General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG 2015)
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Organisational unit
03798 - Kirchner, James W. (emeritus) / Kirchner, James W. (emeritus)