FP6 priority

1.1.6   Sustainable Development, Global Change and Ecosystems

1.6.3

Title of the proposal

Changes of snowmelt runoff in mountain regions in changing environment

Institute

Slovak Academy of Aciences, Institute of Hydrology
Racianska 75, P.O.BOX 94, SK-838 11 Bratislava 38, Slovak Republic

Contact

Research subject for a potential FP6 project

The submitted project will target into the snow cover water amount forecast, forecast of runoff during snowmelt and quantification of the influence of vegetation, climatic and hydrologic factors change on runoff generation during snowmelt in selected mountain catchments.

The atmospheric precipitation remains accumulated in a basin in form of snow cover during several months. In spring the large amount of water accumulated in snow cover releases during short period of several weeks and induces increase of discharge in rivers and increased inflow into reservoirs.

Summary of theoretical principles knowledge of temporal and spatial distribution of snow cover, its accumulation and melting is therefore of the great significance for their practical application at runoff forecast. Mathematical modelling based on energy balance methods and digital terrain model may help to understand the mechanisms of global change impact and to predict possible changes of snow accumulation, ablation and spatial distribution of snow cover and consecutive snowmelt runoff.
The first step will be identification of the expected change of climatic and hydrological data and vegetation parameters of which have major influence on runoff generation change. Analysis of snow cover and runoff changes (especially the extreme events) in mountain catchments with respect to expected climatic and vegetation changes will be performed using distributed hydrological models validated against existing data obtained from field measurements.

Recent international cooperation of the research team

Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research of the University of Colorado, USA

Proposer´s relevant publications related to the research subject

Kostka, Z., Holko, L.: Impact of climate change on runoff in a small mountain catchment. (In Slovak with English abstract). National Climate Programme of the Slovak Republic, Bratislava, 8, 2000, 91-109.
Holko, L., Kostka, Z., Parajka, J.: Spatial distribution of snow in mountain catchments and basin-averaged modelling, Int. Conf. \"Problems in Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology\", Institute of Hydrodynamics AS CR, 1999, Prague, 1999, 400-407.
Parajka, J.: Simulation of the snowmelt runoff for the upper Hron basin. J. Hydrol. Hydromech., No. 1, 2001, 1 - 13.
Parajka, J., Holko, L., Kostka, Z.: Snowmelt modelling and GIS. GIS at Development Magazine, Vol. 5, Issue 10, 2001, 23-27.