Hydropower in Russia: Case Study on Hydrological Management of the Volga-Kama Cascade

The capacity of hydroelectric power plants (HPPs) in the Russian Federation (RF) exceeds 50 GW. It is about 20% of the total capacity of all power plants in the country. The Volga River basin is the biggest in Europe with the catchment area of 1 360 000 km2. It covers the most populated and most industrialized part of the European Russia. The largest cascade of reservoirs in Russia and Europe is the Volga-Kama cascade (VKC) constructed in 1930–1980. It consists of 12 great water reservoirs and HPPs with total capacity about 12 GW. The main peculiarity for the VKC management is the combination of different requirements by various economy sectors: safety, energy, navigation, water needs for domestic and industrial services, agriculture and fishery, recreation and ecological rules. These sectors often make conflicting demands for the VKC operation. The VKC management principle is to balance and satisfy all of them taking into account the changing climate and economical effectiveness. Modern decisions for the VKC management are based on two principles. First is the constant optimization of the whole VKC management rules, taking into account both climate change and the Strategy of the country development. The second is the constant technical modernization of the VKC equipment to achieve the best economical effectiveness and safety for ecosystems and population

Data for wetlandscapes and their changes around the world

Geography and associated hydrological, hydroclimate and land-use conditions and their changes determine the states and dynamics of wetlands and their ecosystem services. The influences of these controls are not limited to just the local scale of each individual wetland but extend over larger landscape areas that integrate multiple wetlands and their total hydrological catchment – the wetlandscape. However, the data and knowledge of conditions and changes over entire wetlandscapes are still scarce, limiting the capacity to accurately understand and manage critical wetland ecosystems and their services under global change. We present a new Wetlandscape Change Information Database (WetCID), consisting of geographic, hydrological, hydroclimate and land-use information and data for 27 wetlandscapes around the world. This combines survey-based local information with geographic shapefiles and gridded datasets of large-scale hydroclimate and land-use conditions and their changes over whole wetlandscapes. Temporally, WetCID contains 30-year time series of data for mean monthly precipitation and temperature and annual land-use conditions. The survey-based site information includes local knowledge on the wetlands, hydrology, hydroclimate and land uses within each wetlandscape and on the availability and accessibility of associated local data. This novel database (available through PANGAEA https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.907398; Ghajarnia et al., 2019) can support site assessments; cross-regional comparisons; and scenario analyses of the roles and impacts of land use, hydroclimatic and wetland conditions, and changes in whole-wetlandscape functions and ecosystem services

Wetlandscape Change Information Database (WetCID)

Geography and associated hydrological, hydroclimate and land use conditions and their changes determine the states and dynamics of wetlands and their ecosystem services. The influences of these controls are not limited to just the local scale of each individual wetland, but extend over larger landscape areas that integrate multiple wetlands and their total hydrological catchment – the wetlandscape. However, the data and knowledge of conditions and changes over entire wetlandscapes are still scarce, limiting the capacity to accurately understand and manage critical wetland ecosystems and their services under global change. We present a new Wetlandscape Change Information Database (WetCID), consisting of geographic, hydrological, hydroclimate and land use information and data for 27 wetlandscapes around the world. This combines survey-based local information with geographic shapefiles and gridded datasets of large-scale hydroclimate and land-use conditions and their changes over whole wetlandscapes. Temporally, WetCID contains 30-year time series of data for mean monthly precipitation and temperature, and annual land use conditions. The survey-based site information includes local knowledge on the wetlands, hydrology, hydroclimate and land uses within each wetlandscape, and on the availability and accessibility of associated local data. This novel database can support site assessments, cross-regional comparisons, and scenario analyses of the roles and impacts of land use, hydroclimatic and wetland conditions and changes on whole-wetlandscape functions and ecosystem services