The water management of Boadella-Darnius reservoir (NE Spain) has been analysed for the period 1971-2013 to understand the different strategies applied in the past. Streamflow has been projected under climate conditions included in the Third Report on Climate Change in Catalonia (TCCC) and under land-use change scenarios. We have simulated Darnius-Boadella reservoir inflow (2021-2050) using the Regional Hydro-Ecologic Simulation System (RHESsys) with two objectives: (i) to analyse the impact of climate and land-use changes on the water resources of the basin and (ii) to analyse the different plausible strategies of water management at mid-term period (2021-2050). Results reveal a clear negative trend in dam inflow (-34.7%) since it was built in 1971. The simulations obtained with RHESsys show a similar trend at mid-term (2021-2050) with -31.1% under climate and land-use change conditions. Considering the ecological minimum flow outlined by Catalan Water Agency (ACA) and the possible dam inflow decrease, different water management strategies are needed to mitigate the effects of the expected climate change.
I would like to know more details about the construction of the vegetation scenarios.
In the text I read: "Land cover scenario for three time windows (2021-
2030, 2031-2040 and 2041-2050) were developed, based on the expected evolution of revegetation
within the study area:" How do you determine the evolution?
Thanks so much for your words and comments.
The evolution was determined as a linear function from the actual scenario to the scenario which results from the multi-criteria analysis (under orographic criteria defined in [17]). As the model was run as a dynamic system, it is assumed that the vegetation is adapted, evolved and responded to different cycles of climate, water distribution and soil organic matter tools, in terms of growth. So, we needed that the spatial changes were also gradually. For this reason we established different time steps form the actual period to mid-term period (2041-2050).
