Investigation of low- and high-flow characteristics of karst catchments under climate change

Lebar, Klaudija (author), Medved, Anže (author), Rusjan, Simon (author), Bezak, Nejc (author)

It is not clear how projected climate change will impact the hydrological functioning of complex catchments that have significant karst characteristics. Therefore, in this paper we focused on the investigation of the low- and high-flow characteristics of the karst Ljubljanica River catchment. One smaller (51 km$^2$) and one larger (1135 km$^2$) catchment were selected in order to investigate the projected climate change impact on the hydrological conditions. For the investigation of the hydrological situation in the future, we used a lumped conceptual hydrological model. The model was calibrated using past measured daily data. Using the calibrated model, we investigated the impact of five different climate models outputs for the moderately optimistic scenario (RCP4.5). We investigated the situation in next 30-years periods: 2011-2040, 2041-2070, and 2071-2100. Several low and high-flow indices were calculated and compared. The results indicate that a summer precipitation decrease (i.e., 2011-2070) could lead to lower low-flow values for the investigated areas, which could increase the vulnerability of karst areas. Thus, additional focus should be given to water resource management in karst areas. On the other hand, mean flow could increase in the future. The same also applies for the high-flows where flood frequency analysis results indicate that a climate adaptation factor could be used for the hydrotechnical engineering design. However, differences among investigated models are large and show large variability among investigated cases.

• Language: English
• Keywords: karst, climate change, hydrological modelling, low-flow, peak discharges, RCP4.5
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FGG - Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2019
• Number of pages: 19 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 11, iss. 5, art. 925
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-128463
• UDC: 556.5(497.4)
• ISSN on article: 2073-4441
• DOI: 10.3390/w11050925
• COBISS.SI-ID: 8793953
• Publication date in RUL: 14.07.2021

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Water
• Shortened title: Water
• Publisher: Molecular Diversity Preservation International - MDPI
• ISSN: 2073-4441
• COBISS.SI-ID: 36731653

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 01.05.2019

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: kras, klimatske spremembe, hidrološko modeliranje, nizki pretoki, konice pretokov, RCP4.5