Uncertainties in Flow Duration Curves in anthropized catchments

Abstract

Flow Duration Curves (FDC) are a traditional tool in water resources management. Their applications range from environmental protection planning to hydrosystems design. In many problems natural FDC are needed, that is curves referring to river regimes before alterations due to anthropic water uses.Estimation of FDC, as known, is uncertain in ungauged catchments. Also in gauged catchments, however, uncertainty may be relevant if available flow data are few or recorded after the anthropic alterations were set. This uncertainty may be high in mountain rivers, whose regime is typically more irregular and with significant alterations, mostly due to withdrawals for hydropower uses.The scope of this paper is to analyze these uncertainties, using a methodology to link anthropic uses to FDC alterations. Application to a catchment in the southwestern Alps is finally presented.

Size-age population structure of an endangered and anthropogenically introgressed northern Adriatic population of marble trout (Salmo marmoratus Cuv.): insights for its conservation and sustainable exploitation

“…However, panmixia has been observed in very few cases and genetically pure individuals are present in most populations ( Meraner & Gandolfi, 2018 ), possibly due to a partial overlap of the spawning period of the two parental species and to local differences in the relative size of introduced non-native stocks and native populations ( Meraner et al, 2010 ; Meraner & Gandolfi, 2018 ). Like many other salmonid species, Italian marble trout populations also suffer habitat destruction and degradation from damming, channelization, water withdrawal, hydropeaking events, extraction of riverbed materials, artificial embankments, degradation or destruction of the riparian vegetation, and climate change ( Zerunian, 2003 ; Becciu & Dresti, 2015 ; Dresti et al, 2016 ; Saidi et al, 2014 , 2018 ), with possible but yet uninvestigated synergistic effects on population structure.…”

Comparison of Urban Retrofitting Scenarios for Sustainable Stormwater Control: A Case Study in Milan, Italy

“…An alternative approach is to adopt a probabilistic analytical method that provides long-term simulation accuracy with a simple and low computational effort. This approach has been applied to control storage systems by various authors with good correlation when compared with continuous simulation [3]- [8].…”