Assessing and predicting effects on water quantity and quality in Iberian rivers caused by global change

SCARCE is a multipurpose project that aims to describe and predict the relevance of global change impacts on water availability, water quality and ecosystem services in Mediterranean river basins of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as their impacts on the human society and economy. Hence, the project has assembled a multidisciplinary team of leading scientists in the fields of hydrology, geomorphology, chemistry, ecology, ecotoxicology, economy, engineering and modelling, in an unknown effort in the CONSOLIDER framework. The project also has the active involvement of Water Authorities and other relevant agents as stakeholders. The project has started on 17th December 2009 and will last 5 years.

Project number

CSD2009-00065

Subject(s)

ANALYSIS AND TESTS , DRINKING WATER , FINANCE-ECONOMY , HYDRAULICS - HYDROLOGY , MEASUREMENTS AND INSTRUMENTATION , METHTODOLOGY - STATISTICS - DECISION AID , NATURAL MEDIUM , POLICY-WATER POLICY AND WATER MANAGEMENT , PREVENTION AND NUISANCES POLLUTION , RISKS AND CLIMATOLOGY , WATER DEMAND , WATER QUALITY

Acronym

SCARCE

Geographical coverage

Spain,

Budget (in €)

Programme

Consolider-Ingenio 2010

Web site

http://www.idaea.csic.es/scarceconsolider/publica/P000Main.php

Objectives

SCARCE has two complementary objectives:

The first and largest tackles basic research questions that will define the long-term patterns and actual mechanisms that operate in the hydrology, water quality, habitat dynamics, and ecosystem structure and function of Mediterranean watersheds.

The second objective of the project, or its corollary, is related to the effects of climate and human footprint (taken both as key elements of global change) on the freshwater ecosystem services, as well as the urgent need to finalize, implement, and eventually refine the River Basin Management Plans (RBMP) demanded by the EU Water Framework Directive.

Results

Case studies
	Llobregat
	Ebro
	Júcar
	Guadalquivir
Work packages
	WP1 - Data
	WP2 - Hydrol
	WP3 - Morph
	WP4 - Quality
	WP5 - Process
	WP6 - Upscale
	WP7 - Economy
	WP8 - Services
	WP9 - Frame
	WP10 - Manage

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WP 1. DATA
Data collection and attribution of global change effects

Leader: I. Muñoz

Participants: J. Armengol (UB), M. López de Alda (IDAEA-CSIC), Y. Picó (UVEG), I. Andrés (UPV), C. Conde (UPM), L. Martinez-Landa (UPC), R. Marcé, A. Romaní (ICRA-UdG), P. Drake (CSIC-ICMAN), R.J Batalla (UdL-CTFC), A. Elosegi (EHU), M. Schuhmacher (URV)

This work package wants to gather in a common framework long term observations of hydrology, water quality, sediment transport, biological communities, society and economy in target running Waters to build astandardized database as a consortium-level tool. Further, this WP will check for climate and global change effects in watersheds under study, feeding different research needs across work packages.

Overall, WP DATA will provide an assessment of global change effects on Iberian rivers, and will assist WP UPSCALE, PROCESS, and SERVICES in detecting adequate hot-spots to be used as calibration sites for models simulating key river ecosystem processes. For this purpose, regional water institutions that have expressed their interest in the project (Agencia Andaluza del Agua, Confederaciones Hidrográficas del Ebro, del Júcar and del Guadalquivir, Agencia Catalana del Agua, Aguas de Barcelona, see Annex 1) andparticipating research teams will compile, share, and standardize a vast database that will be analyzed at the regional scale using appropriate time series analyses and GIS tools.

Additionally, the consortium will assemble a meteorological record covering the entire Mediterranean climatic area of Spain and the time span of the biogeochemical records. Meteorological time-series will be composed from data collected by regional authorities or acquired to the Instituto Nacional de Meteorología. SCARCE will take advantage of existing regional climate change scenarios, such as those from PRUDENCE (Christensen, 2005) and ENSEMBLES (Hewitt, 2005) projects. These will be used in modelling different climatic responses at the regional scale in WP UPSCALE. Finally, GIS standardized LANDSAT land use thematic maps will be used to characterize land cover changes during the last decades.

MAIN TASKS

- Quality check of the data and harmonizing process of the data series

- Determination of coherent spatial regions in regard of their response to climate trends and cycles

- Determination of flagship sites for calibrating models

Period

[01/01/2009 - 31/12/2014]

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