Albert Rovira

• PhD
• Technician at Water catalan agency

Se presenta en este trabajo los datos de campo y análisis que prueban el comportamiento dinámico del río Tordera. El aspecto más llamativo es el descenso general (incisión) del cauce del río, del orden de 3m y a lo largo de unos 15 km, en los últimos 40 años. Se muestra con datos de campo que la erosión general transitoria del cauce arenoso puede s...

El río Ritort es un afluente del río Ter con diversos obstáculos transversales que dificultan la continuidad longitudinal de la fauna, el caudal y el sedimento. En este artículo se presentan los resultados del seguimiento geomorfológico de la evolución del río Ritort tras la demolición de un azud de 8 m de altura realizada a finales de 2020. Se lle...

The biomonitoring methods implemented by water authorities are mostly developed for perennial rivers, and do not apply to temporary rivers (TRs). We propose a new classification for TRs to better assess their ecological status. It arises from the LIFE+ TRivers project, which was conducted in the Catalan and the Júcar Mediterranean river basin distr...

Delta wetlands are increasingly recognized as important sinks for ‘blue carbon,’ although this and other ecosystem services that deltas provide are threatened by human activities. We investigated factors that affect sediment accretion using short term (3 years using marker horizons) and longer-term measures (∼50 year using ¹³⁷ Cs soil core distribu...

It is widely recognized nowadays that there are at least two different phases of bed-load sediment transport in gravel-bed rivers. However, the transition between these phases is still poorly or subjectively defined, especially at bends in rivers, where cross-stream sediment transport can strongly influence changes in the texture of the transported...

A new data set of bed load measurements in a cross-section at the exit of a river bend is presented. Data are analyzed to identify processes that contribute to the morphodynamic stability of gravel bed meanders. It is shown that boundary shear stress and bed material texture are strongly coupled, resulting in an almost equal mobility at incipient m...

Regulation by reservoirs affects both the freshwater regime and the sediment delivery at the area downstream, and may have a significant impact on water quality in the final transitional water bodies. Spain is one the countries with more water storage capacity by reservoirs in the world. Dense reservoir networks can be found in most of the hydrogra...

River regulation by dams for both flood control and water storage has allowed to decrease both uncertainty and risks associated to extreme hydrological events. However, the alteration of the natural river flow regime and the detraction of high water volumes usually lead to significant effects downstream on the morphology, water quality, ecological...

1. Studies quantifying the content of fine particulate matter (organic and inorganic) retained in macrophyte stands are scarce. Thus, little is known about the relationship between retention of fine particulate matter and macrophyte architecture, especially in rivers. Here, we quantified the amount of organic and inorganic fine particulate matter r...

Marsh restoration is an effective tool to remove water and soil metals via plant uptake and soil accumulation. However, few studies have attempted to quantify metal accumulation and removal in Mediterranean restored marshes. This study aimed to assess changes in water and soil metals in an oligohaline-restored marsh experiment that was set in an ab...

Several attempts to estimate the suspended load and the sediment deficit caused by the reservoirs have been carried out in the lower Ebro River. However, existing data are scarce, scattered along time and space, and obtained under different hydrological conditions and methods. This study estimate the presently suspended sediment load of the lowermo...

Eutrophication is now a serious environmental problem worldwide because it disrupts the metabolism of aquatic ecosystems. In the Ebro Delta, intensive rice farming during the 20th century has increased coastal eutrophication and caused ecological and economic impacts. Marsh restoration is as an effective economic and ecological tool to remove nutri...

The Ebro Delta (Spain) is among the most important marsh areas in the Western Mediterranean Sea. Fluvial sediment reduction by dams in a relative sea-level rise (RSLR) scenario has increased the delta plain flooding risk. The objective of this study was to assess factors controlling of marsh elevation and C accumulation in a Mediterranean oligohali...

The Ebro Delta (Spain) is among the most important marsh areas in the Western Mediterranean Sea. Fluvial sediment reduction by dams in a relative sea-level rise (RSLR) scenario has increased the delta plain flooding risk. The objective of this study was to assess factors controlling of marsh elevation and C accumulation in a Mediterranean oligohali...

Purpose We analysed the status of current water and sediment management practices in six deltas and estuaries, which were part of the European DELTANET, INTERREG-funded network. Materials and methods These systems—the Danube, Ebro and Vistula deltas and the Elbe, Minho and Severn estuaries— represent different geographic regions of Europe. This ena...

The Ebro Delta (Catalonia, Spain) is one of the most valuable coastal zones within the Mediterranean Sea, supporting a highly productive rice agricultural system, as well as a myriad of coastal marsh habitats. However, chronic reductions of fluvial sediments coupled with accelerated relative sea level rise (RSLR) have created an environment where a...

The lower Ebro River (Catalonia, Spain) has recently undergone a regime shift from a phytoplankton to a macrophyte-dominated system. Macrophytes started to spread at the end of the 1990s and since 2002 artificial floods (flushing flows) of short duration (1-2 days) are released from the Riba-roja dam once or twice a year in order to reduce macrophy...

Suspended load dynamics were analyzed for the period 2007-2009 in a semi-meandering cross-section under different hydrological conditions. Samples were collected at four different points of the cross-section. During "low discharges" (≤ 600 m³/s) suspended load samples were collected at-a-monthly basis, whereas at "high discharges" (> 600 m³/s) samp...

The lower Ebro River (Catalonia, Spain) has recently undergone a regime shift from a phytoplankton dominated to a macrophyte-dominated system. This shift is well known in shallow lakes but apparently it has never been documented in rivers. Two initial hypotheses to explain the collapse of the phytoplankton were considered: a) the diminution of nutr...

The Delta of the Ebro River (Catalonia, Spain) is among the most important wetlands in the western Mediterranean, highly valuable both economically and ecologically. Its natural hydrological and sedimentary regimes have been heavily modified by dams and land reclamation leading to coastal erosion and surface elevation loss. The historic and current...

Tracers are marked particles introduced into streams to obtain information on the movement of sediment in rivers. On the lower Deschutes River, Oregon, the threshold for bed mobility has been of interest in the relicensing of hydroelectric dams, with cross sections plotted from historical US Geological survey gauging records having shown changes at...

Abstract Background, Aim and Scope Past and present management of the Ebro catchment have altered water, sediment and nutrient fluxes of the lower Ebro River and its delta. The construction of the Mequinensa and Riba-Roja dams during the 1960s disrupted the sediment transport continuity. As a result, the lower Ebro River and its delta are facing a...

Transport processes that lead to the initiation of bedload motion in gravel-bed rivers have not yet been clarified. We report patch- and grain-scale processes involved in the initiation of bedload motion in a natural gravel-bed stream as observed through a series of video experiments. With increasing flow strength, the phases of initiation of motio...

Suspended sediment dynamics are still imperfectly understood, especially in areas of Mediterranean climate with strong seasonal contrasts, where few studies have been conducted. The aim of this study is to analyze the variability in the suspended sediment load at different temporal scales (within-flood variability, monthly-seasonal and annual) in t...

The sediment yield of the Mediterranean Tordera River (894 km2) has been computed from field measurements of runoff, suspended sediment and bedload transport. Measurements were carried out during 1990s at three different points within the Tordera basin: the Upper Tordera (35 km2), the Arbucies River (106 km2), and the Lower Tordera (785 km2). Almos...

The channel of the lower Tordera River (Catalan Coastal Ranges) was intensively mined between 1956 and 1987, at an extraction rate 14 times higher than the replenishment rates. Mining caused incision of up to 2 m over the whole reach, leading to damage of infrastructures and affecting the groundwater system. In this paper we analyse the response of...

The lower Tordera River is a representative case of water and sediment dynamics and uses in a large river in the Western Mediterranean region. Along the study reach, the fluvial regime of the river changes, shifting from a perennial water and sediment circulation in the upper parts to an ephemeral flow pattern in the lower sections. The fluvial sed...

The sediment budget for the Lower Tordera has been evaluated for the dry period 1997–1999 by measuring the bed load transport in two cross-sections. The mobilization of most of the river bed fractions in both cross-sections is produced during floods of moderate magnitude and frequency. However, results show that coarser fractions (>16 mm) mobilized...

The objective is to construct the sediment budget of the Mediterranean Lower Tordera River, recently affected by intensive gravel mining. During the relatively dry study period, mean annual sediment transit (mostly bed load) at the upper section was 30 000 tonnes, while 21 500 tonnes passed the downstream section, close to river mouth. An average o...

An automatic station for monitoring bedload transport has been installed in a gravel-bed river. The station has two slot samplers with the pressure-pillow system (Birbeck-type) that allow a continuous measurement of bedload transport. The paper shows the bedload sampler operation, the load tests and the first results obtained. It is the first time...