Scenario-based impact assessment of global and regional change on the semi-natural flow regime

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2012 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Meteorology, Aeronomy, Climatology, grade: with honours, - (Institute of Meteorology and Water Management National Research Institute), course: Impacts of natural and anthropogenic conditions on the hydrological regime of rivers: A Narew River Basin case study, language: English, abstract: The general aim of this thesis is to assess the impact of a multiple set of scenarios, describing changes of global- and regional-scale driving forces on the ecological functions of the flow regime. This general aim translates into three more specific research objectives:1. A comprehensive spatial validation of a large-scale, semi-distributed hydrological model, to test its ability to assess spatial patterns in impacts on flow regime indicators.2. A broad description of the water requirements of selected river-dependent biota and their parametrisation into indicators derivable using hydrological model output.3. A spatially-distributed analysis of future impacts on environmental flow indicators under various model scenarios, derived from key local stakeholders input, as well as based on downscaled projections of global change.The research undertaken to fulfil these objectives was carried out as part of a case study of the Narew River Basin, NE Poland. Although it is believed that the findings of this thesis are important, especially for the water management of the Narew River Basin, various approaches developed and adapted in this thesis are not limited to this area only but are applicable elsewhere. Impacts in the present study are assessed not only on the flow regime as such, but also on its ecological functions, i.e. on the environmental flow regime. This underlines the novelty of this thesis, as going beyond the pure impacts on the flow regime in a scenario-modelling framework is rare in hydrological science, if achieved at all.