Lessons Learnt from the Long-Term Management of a Large (Re)constructed Wetland, the Kis-Balaton Protection System (Hungary)

Abstract

Environmental management decisions should be made based on solid scientific evidence that relies on monitoring and modeling. In practice, changing economic, societal, and political boundary conditions often interfere with management during large, long, and complex projects. The result may be a sub-optimal development path that may finally diverge from the original intentions and be economically or technically ineffective. Nevertheless, unforeseen benefits may be created in the end. The Kis-Balaton wetland system is a typical illustration of such a case. Despite tremendous investments and huge efforts put in monitoring and modeling, the sequence of decisions during implementation can hardly be considered optimal. We use a catchment model and a basic water quality model to coherently review the impacts of management decisions during the 30-year history. Due to the complexity of the system, science mostly excelled in finding explanations for observed changes after the event instead of predicting the impacts of management measures a priori. In parallel, the political setting and sectoral authorities experienced rearrangements during system implementation. Despite being expensive as a water quality management investment originally targeting nutrient removal, the Kis-Balaton wetland system created a huge ecological asset, and thereby became worth the price.

Joint Spatial Modeling of Nutrients and Their Ratio in the Sediments of Lake Balaton (Hungary): A Multivariate Geostatistical Approach

“…As it has been pointed out in the Introduction (Section 1), the end-users often need spatially explicit information on water quality indicators at a larger support than that on which sampling and laboratory measurement have been conducted [17,[32][33][34][35], a situation referred to as change-of-support in geostatistics. It calls for upscaling to make spatial predictions and the associated uncertainty appropriate for the end-users' requirements.…”

“…The scale at which spatial information on water quality indicators is required may vary widely from application to application [31]. End-users and the models they use or the assessment in which they are interested often require spatial information at a larger support than that on which sampling and laboratory measurement have been conducted [17,[32][33][34][35], a situation known as change-of-support. In geostatistics, support is a technical term that generally refers to the length, area, or volume associated with each observation or measurement [36], but the complete definition of this term also includes the shape, size, and orientation of the regions associated with the measurements.…”

Monitoring, Modeling and Management of Water Quality

“…Nevertheless, unforeseen benefits may be created in the end [20]. The Kis-Balaton wetland system is a typical illustration of such a case and has been extensively studied by Honti et al [20].…”

“…Nevertheless, unforeseen benefits may be created in the end [20]. The Kis-Balaton wetland system is a typical illustration of such a case and has been extensively studied by Honti et al [20]. Despite tremendous investments and huge efforts put in monitoring and modeling, the sequence of decisions during implementation can hardly be considered optimal.…”

“…In parallel, the political setting and sectoral authorities experienced rearrangements during the system implementation. Despite being expensive as a water quality management investment, originally targeting nutrient removal, the Kis-Balaton wetland system created a huge ecological asset, and thereby became worth the price [20].…”