Integrating water management, habitat modelling and water quality at basin scale environmental flow assessment - Tormes River (Spain)

"This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Hydrological Sciences Journal on 2014, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2013.821573"Multidisciplinary models are useful for integrating different disciplines when addressing water planning and management problems. We combine water resources management, water quality and habitat analysis tools that were developed with the Decision Support System AQUATOOL at a basin scale. The water management model solves the allocation problem through network flow optimisation and considers the environmental flows in some river stretches. Once volumes and flows are estimated, the water quality model is applied. Furthermore, the flows are evaluated from an ecological perspective by using time series of aquatic species habitat indicators. This approach was applied in the Tormes River Water System, where agricultural demands jeopardise the environmental needs of the river ecosystem. Additionally, water quality problems in the lower part of the river result from wastewater loading and agricultural pollution. Our methodological framework can be used to define water management rules that maintain water supply, aquatic ecosystem and water quality legal standards. The integration of ecological and water management criteria in a software platform with objective criteria and heuristic optimisation procedures allows for the realistic assessment and application of environmental flows. Here, we improve the general methodological framework by assessing the hydrological alteration of selected environmental flow regime scenarios.This study was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the SCARCE project [Consolider-Ingenio 2010 CSD2009-00065].Paredes Arquiola, J.; Solera Solera, A.; Martinez-Capel, F.; Momblanch Benavent, A.; Andreu Álvarez, J. (2014). Integrating water management, habitat modelling and water quality at basin scale environmental flow assessment - Tormes River (Spain). Hydrological Sciences Journal. 59(3-4):878-889. https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2013.821573S878889593-4Acreman, M. (2005). Linking science and decision-making: features and experience from environmental river flow setting. Environmental Modelling & Software, 20(2), 99-109. doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2003.08.019Andreu, J., Capilla, J., & Sanchís, E. (1996). AQUATOOL, a generalized decision-support system for water-resources planning and operational management. Journal of Hydrology, 177(3-4), 269-291. doi:10.1016/0022-1694(95)02963-xBelmar, O., Velasco, J., & Martinez-Capel, F. (2011). Hydrological Classification of Natural Flow Regimes to Support Environmental Flow Assessments in Intensively Regulated Mediterranean Rivers, Segura River Basin (Spain). 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Validació biològica del règim de cabals de manteniment definits al pla sectorial de les conques internes de Catalunya en 10 trams fluvials. Technical report of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia for the Agència Catalana de l’Aigua (Generalitat de Catalunya). (In Spanish)Olaya-Marín, E. J., Martínez-Capel, F., Soares Costa, R. M., & Alcaraz-Hernández, J. D. (2012). Modelling native fish richness to evaluate the effects of hydromorphological changes and river restoration (Júcar River Basin, Spain). Science of The Total Environment, 440, 95-105. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.07.093Olden, J. D., & Poff, N. L. (2003). Redundancy and the choice of hydrologic indices for characterizing streamflow regimes. River Research and Applications, 19(2), 101-121. doi:10.1002/rra.700Bain, M. B., & Meixler, M. S. (2008). A target fish community to guide river restoration. River Research and Applications, 24(4), 453-458. doi:10.1002/rra.1065Paredes, J., Andreu, J., & Solera, A. (2010). A decision support system for water quality issues in the Manzanares River (Madrid, Spain). Science of The Total Environment, 408(12), 2576-2589. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2010.02.037Paredes-Arquiola, J., Andreu-Álvarez, J., Martín-Monerris, M., & Solera, A. (2010). Water Quantity and Quality Models Applied to the Jucar River Basin, Spain. Water Resources Management, 24(11), 2759-2779. doi:10.1007/s11269-010-9578-zParedes-Arquiola, J.et al. 2011. Implementing environmental flows in complex water resources systems – case study: the Duero river basin, Spain.River Research and Applications, 29, 451–468. doi:10.1002/rra.1617Poff, N. L., Allan, J. D., Bain, M. B., Karr, J. R., Prestegaard, K. L., Richter, B. D., … Stromberg, J. C. (1997). The Natural Flow Regime. BioScience, 47(11), 769-784. doi:10.2307/1313099POFF, N. L., RICHTER, B. D., ARTHINGTON, A. H., BUNN, S. E., NAIMAN, R. J., KENDY, E., … WARNER, A. (2010). 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Scale issues in soil moisture modelling: problems and prospects

Soil moisture storage is an important component of the hydrological cycle and plays a key role in land-surface-atmosphere interaction. The soil-moisture storage equation in this study considers precipitation as an input and soil moisture as a residual term for runoff and evapotranspiration. A number of models have been developed to estimate soil moisture storage and the components of the soil-moisture storage equation. A detailed discussion of the impli cation of the scale of application of these models reports that it is not possible to extrapolate processes and their estimates from the small to the large scale. It is also noted that physically based models for small-scale applications are sufficiently detailed to reproduce land-surface- atmosphere interactions. On the other hand, models for large-scale applications oversimplify the processes. Recently developed physically based models for large-scale applications can only be applied to limited uses because of data restrictions and the problems associated with land surface characterization. It is reported that remote sensing can play an important role in over coming the problems related to the unavailability of data and the land surface characterization of large-scale applications of these physically based models when estimating soil moisture storage.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline