A multi-scale approach to modelling spatial and dynamic ecological patterns for reservoir’s water quality management.
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2009
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Resumo
With growing levels of urbanization and agriculture throughout the world, it is increasingly important
that both research and management efforts take into account the effects of this widespread landscape
alteration and its consequences for natural systems. Freshwater ecosystems, namely reservoirs, are particularly
sensitive to land use changes. In this context, modelling can be very useful, for decision support,
as an investigative tool to forecast the outcome of various scenarios, to guide current management in
order to meet future targets and to develop integrated frameworks for management accordingly to the
Water Framework Directive (WFD). The present paper examined the applicability of a holistic Stochastic-
Dynamic Methodology (StDM), coupled with a Cellular Automata (CA) model, in capturing howexpected
changes at land use level will alter the ecological status of lentic ecosystems, namely at physicochemical
and biological levels. The methodology was applied to Portuguese reservoirs located in the Douro’s
basin and illustrated with a series of stochastic-dynamic and spatial outputs taking into account expected
scenarios regarding land use changes. Overall, the simulation results are encouraging since they seem to
demonstrate the tool reliability in capturing the stochastic environmental dynamics of the selected metrics
facing spatial explicit scenarios. The ultimate goal was to couple monitoring assessment and the
described modelling techniques to ease management and decision making regarding the practical implementation
of the WFD, both at the scale of the reservoir body and at the scale of the respective river
watershed dynamics.
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Stochastic-Dynamic Methodology , GIS , Land use changes , Ecological status , Phytoplankton , Ecological indicators , Water Framework Directive , Environmental management , Reservoirs
Citação
Cabecinha E. et al, 2009