Cintia Bertacchi Uvo

Finnish Environment Institute | ymparisto · Freshwater Centre

In recent years, the analysis of abrupt and non-abrupt changes in precipitation has received much attention due to the importance of climate change-related issues (e.g., extreme climate events). In this study, we used a novel segmentation algorithm, DBEST (Detecting Breakpoints and Estimating Segments in Trend), to analyze the greatest changes in p...

Assessing the relative contribution of Land Use and Cover Changes (LUCC) and climate changes on runoff still represents a great challenge for water resources management. This issue is particularly critical for the Upper Paraná River Basin (UPRB), one of the most important basins in South America and responsible for most of the production of food, e...

Within a single region, it is possible to identify opposite changes in flow production. This proved to be the case for several basins in southeastern South America. It remains challenging to the causes this behavior and whether changes in streamflow will continue at current levels or decline in the coming decades. In this study, we used the Soil Wa...

The São Francisco River Basin (SFRB) is one of the main watersheds in Brazil, standing out for generating energy and consumption, among other ecosystem services. Hence, it is important to identify hydrological drought events and the anomalous climate patterns associated with dry conditions. The Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) for 12 months was u...

The Upper Paraná River Basin (UPRB) has undergone remarkable land use and cover changes (LUCC) in recent decades. This paper analyses the hydrologic response to LUCC in the UPRB between 1985 and 2015, using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. The impacts of LUCC were examined for annual, wet, and dry season (both during calibrated and...

To date, the assessment of hydrological climate change impacts, not least on pluvial flooding, has been severely limited by i) the insufficient spatial resolution of regional climate models (RCMs) as well as ii) the simplified description of key processes, e.g., convective rainfall generation. Therefore, expectations have been high on the recent ge...

Study region Sixty-four river gauging stations distributed over Sweden. Study focus To investigate the influence of climate teleconnection patterns (TP) on streamflow in Sweden. Streamflow data is regionalized and the average hydrographs of each homogeneous region is divided into hydrological seasons. Thereafter the impact of different TPs on the...

Precipitation varies spatio‐temporally in amount, intensity, and frequency. Although, much research has been conducted on analyzing precipitation patterns and variation at the global scale, trend types have still not received much attention. This study developed a new polynomial‐based model for detecting nonlinear and linear trends in a satellite p...

This study aims at assess the importance of a conceptual representation of hydrological processes when modelling atmospheric circulation. It compares results from a regional atmospheric model that interprets land surface hydrological processes based on parameterizations with results from a two-way coupled atmosphere-hydrological model that has a pr...

The chapter 30 "Drought and Agricultural Production in the Central Andes" focuses on precipitation variability and its relation with El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and the association between crop yield and ENSO. To understand the impact of ENSO on agriculture could help to implement/improve early warning systems and proactive drought managem...

The countries in the Sahel are undergoing rapid changes due to a mixture of demographic, ecological, and economic transformations. Rural livelihoods in these countries are predominantly engaged in agriculture, which is a foundational component of both food security and the general economy. The relationships between ongoing socio-economic transforma...

Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) is recognized as a driving force for phenotypic divergence. Here, we aim at assessing the ability of zooplankton to induce UVR tolerance and disentangle the relative importance of local adaptations behind the expression of such tolerance. Two populations of Daphnia pulex, derived from environments strongly differing in U...

This work presents an analysis of the observed trends in extreme precipitation events in the Paraná River Basin (PRB) from 1977 to 2016 (40 years) based on daily records from 853 stations. The Mann-Kendall (MK) test and Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) interpolation were applied to annual and seasonal precipitation, and also for four extreme precipi...

This paper developed a multi-space prediction model for seasonal precipitation using a high-resolution grid dataset (0.5° × 0.5°) together with climate indices. The model is based on principal component analyses (PCA) and artificial neural networks (ANN). Trend analyses show that mean annual and seasonal precipitation in the area is increasing depe...

This study presents a new land cover map for the Upper Paraná River Basin (UPRB-2015), with high spatial resolution (30 m), and a high number of calibration and validation sites. To the new map, 50 Landsat-8 scenes were classified with the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm and their level of agreement was assessed using overall accuracy and Ka...

The Upper Paraná River Basin (UPRB) has undergone many rapid land use changes in recent decades, due to accelerating population growth. Thus, the prediction of water resources has crucial importance in improving planning and sustainable management. This paper presents a large-scale hydrological modelling of the UPRB, using the Soil and Water Assess...

In Brazil, the northeastern region (NEB) is considered one of the most vulnerable areas of the country in terms of precipitation variability due to frequent drought episodes during the rainy season. Differently from the Northern NEB (NNEB), where dry season is consistently dry, the Eastern NEB (ENEB) exhibits a high interannual variability of preci...

Precipitation variability over the Bolivian Altiplano is strongly affected by local climate and temporal variation of large‐scale atmospheric flow. Precipitation is the main water source for drinking water and agricultural production. For this reason, a better understanding of precipitation variability and its relation with climate phenomena can pr...

The high variability in the hydrological regime of the Eastern Hydrological Region (EHR) of Northeast Brazil often promotes floods and droughts, leading serious socio-economic issues. Therefore, this work aims to investigate connections between spatiotemporal hydrological variability of EHR and large-scale climate phenomena. Multivariate statistica...

Changes to agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa are subject to a wide range of drivers, often resulting in rapid and nonlinear dynamics. Such dynamics are however rarely recognized in studies of trends and drivers, which usually rely on assumptions of gradual progressions, and often using highly aggregated data. This paper addresses this lack...

Modelling is an alternative solution to reduce the cost of water quality monitoring. Commonly, concentration of pollutants is estimated based on limited sampling information. Concentration of ions in rivers can be estimated using modelling strategies that involve statistics and artificial intelligence as well as the understanding of physical proces...

Hydropower makes up nearly half of Sweden's electrical energy production. However, the distribution of the water resources is not aligned with demand, as most of the inflows to the reservoirs occur during the spring flood period. This means that carefully planned reservoir management is required to help redistribute water resources to ensure optima...

Overbank floods results from historical high flows, has been the cause of severe damages and important socioeconomic issues around the world. A non-dense network of daily rainfall measurements may be unable to track the spatial and temporal heterogeneities which can drive flooding and stormwater generation. Thus, high-resolution radar rainfall data...

Lake Urmia in northwest Iran, once one of the largest hypersaline lakes in the world, has shrunk by almost 90% in area and 80% in volume during the last four decades. To improve the understanding of regional differences in water availability throughout the region and to refine the existing information on precipitation variability, this study invest...

Zooplankton have evolved several mechanisms to deal with environmental threats, such as ultraviolet radiation (UVR), and in order to identify strategies inherent to organisms exposed to different UVR environments, we here examine life-history traits of two lineages of Daphnia pulex. The lineages differed in the UVR dose they had received at their p...

Hydropower makes up nearly half of Sweden's electrical energy production. However, the distribution of the water resources is not aligned with demand, most of the inflows to the reservoirs occur during the spring flood period. This means that carefully planned reservoir management is required to help redistribute the water resources to ensure optim...

The purpose of this study is to present and analyze previously unpublished quantitative agricultural data for the area on the shores of Lake Chad in Chad, and explore its relations to hydro-climatic factors (lake levels, rainfall and temperature). This is a rural area with livelihoods based on agropastoral and fishing activities, which are directly...

Hydrological climate change impact assessment is generally performed by following a sequence of steps from global and regional climate modelling, through data tailoring (bias-adjustment and downscaling) and hydrological modelling, to analysis and impact assessment. This “climate-hydrology-assessment chain” has been developed with a primary focus on...

Eastern Northeast Brazil (ENEB) generally experiences a high variability in precipitation in the dry season, with amplitudes that can overcome 500 mm. The understanding of this variability can help in mitigating the socio-economic issues related to the planning and management of water resources this region, which is highly vulnerable to drought. Th...

Overbank flooding caused by historically high flows, such as that in the Rio Mundaú watershed (lying between the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco) in 2010, has been the cause of widespread damage. The pur pose of work described in this paper was to propose a mapping of areas liable to flooding in the township of Rio Largo (Alagoas) in the Rio Munda...

Hydropower is a major energy source in Sweden, and proper reservoir management prior to the spring-flood onset is crucial for optimal production. This requires accurate forecasts of the accumulated discharge in the spring-flood period (i.e. the spring-flood volume, SFV). Today's SFV forecasts are generated using a model-based climatological ensembl...

The summer precipitation from June to September in the source region of the Yellow River accounts for about 70% of the annual total, and its decrease would cause further water shortage problems. Consequently, the objectives of this study are to improve the understanding of the linkages between the precipitation in the source region of the Yellow Ri...

The effect of future climate scenarios on surface and groundwater resources was simulated using a modeling approach for an artificial recharge area in arid southern Iran. Future climate data for the periods of 2010–2030 and 2030–2050 were acquired from the Canadian Global Coupled Model (CGCM 3.1) for scenarios A1B, A2, and B1. These scenarios were...

Approximately 50% of Sweden's electricity is produced by hydropower. This makes energy production in the country vulnerable to factors affecting water availability. Research has shown a positive correlation between the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and hydropower production in Norway and northern Sweden during winter months. The correlation is,...

Hydropower is a major energy source in Sweden and proper reservoir management prior to the spring flood onset is crucial for optimal production. This requires useful forecasts of the accumulated discharge in the spring flood period (i.e. the spring-flood volume, SFV). Today's SFV forecasts are generated using a model-based climatological ensemble a...

The spatial patterns of precipitation regarding physiography and atmospheric circulations in the Lake Urmia Basin have been investigated. Daily rainfall time series for the 50 most reliable precipitation stations for the period 1980-2010 were analyzed to detect the regional precipitation pattern. To identify rainfall homogeneous regions, principal...

The summer precipitation (June-September) in the source region of the Yellow River accounts for about 70% of the annual total, playing an important role in water availability. This study divided the source region of the Yellow River into homogeneous zones based on precipitation variability using cluster analysis. Summer precipitation trends and tel...

The hydrology of the Yellow River source region is expected to be affected by coming climate change. This will have repercussions for the 110 million basin inhabitants. Consequently, precipitation, temperature, and streamflow trends and periodicities during the last 50 years were investigated to identify significant changes in time and space over t...

The impact of future climate scenarios on surface and groundwater resources was simulated using a modeling approach for an artificial recharge area in arid southern Iran. Future climate data for the periods of 2010–2030 and 2030–2050 were acquired from the Canadian Global Coupled Model (CGCM 3.1) for scenarios A1B, A2, and B1. These scenarios were...

Aquifers and groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs) are facing increasing pressure from water consumption, irrigation and climate change. These pressures modify groundwater levels and their temporal patterns and threaten vital ecosystem services such as arable land irrigation and ecosystem water requirements, especially during droughts. This revie...

This work describes the two-way coupling performed between the regional atmospheric model Brazilian Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (BRAMS) and the hydrological model MGB-IPH. As a first step of the atmosphere-hydrology coupling, only the water balance variables were coupled. Differences in temporal and spatial scales between MGH-IPH and BRAMS...

The aim of this study is to investigate annual variation in heavy rainfall frequency in Kyushu area (target area) located in the west of Japan and, subsequently, to demonstrate annual variation in heavy rainfall frequency relating to each synoptic field pattern recognized by using the Self-Organizing Map (SOM) developed by Kohonen (1995). The patte...

In this work, a first-order upwind and a high-order flux-limiter schemes for solving the advection–diffusion equation on unstructured grids were evaluated. The numerical schemes were implemented as a module of an unstructured two-dimensional depth-averaged circulation model for shallow lakes (IPH-UnTRIM2D), and they were applied to the Guaíba River...

The 14C content of 60 human blood serum samples from residents of Malmö (Sweden) in 1978, obtained from a biobank, has been measured to estimate the accuracy of 14C bomb-pulse dating. The difference between the date estimated using the Calibomb software and sampling date varied between −3 ± 0.4 and +0.2 ± 0.5 years. The average age deviation of all...

This study explores the short-, medium- and long-term impacts of expansion of the sugarcane plantation on the water balance of the Rio Grande Basin, Brazil, as estimated by changes in evapotranspiration, soil moisture content and surface runoff calculated by a hydrological model. Twenty years of simulation are made using three different land use sc...

The response of the terrestrial carbon cycle to climate change constitutes a considerable part of the uncertainty surrounding climate change. One of the largest sources of this uncertainty is the heterogeneity of the predictions of future climate made by different climate models (general circulation models, GCMs). Not only do GCMs differ in their c...

The hydropower industry is highly reliant on hydrological forecasts to plan and operate their installations efficiently and like all forecasting the earlier the information is available the more useful it can be, providing they have skill. The aim of this work is to understand how large scale circulation patterns (LSCP) affect the local hydrology a...

One of the largest sources of uncertainties in modelling of the future global climate is the response of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Studies have shown that it is likely that the extant land sink of carbon will weaken in a warming climate. Should this happen, a larger portion of the annual carbon dioxide emissions will remain in the atmosphere, a...

The radiocarbon concentration of different atherosclerotic plaque fragments obtained from 20 patients in Portugal, operated in 2000-2001, has been measured in order to define the year of plaque formation. A difference of 1.8-15 yr was observed, with the mean and median both 9 yr, between the bomb-pulse date estimated with the CALIBomb software and...

The radiocarbon concentration of different atherosclerotic plaque fragments obtained from 20 patients in Portugal, operated in 2000–2001, has been measured in order to define the year of plaque formation. A difference of 1.8–15 yr was observed, with the mean and median both 9 yr, between the bomb-pulse date estimated with the CALIBomb software and...

One of the largest sources of uncertainties in modelling of the future global climate is the response of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Studies have shown that it is likely that the extant land sink of carbon will weaken in a warming climate. Should this happen, a~larger portion of the annual carbon dioxide emissions will remain in the atmosphere, a...

In seasonally snow covered regions, such as Sweden, the winter precipitation often falls as snow which is temporarily stored in the snow pack during the colder months. This storage is later released over a relatively short period of intense flows during in the warmer months. These spring flood events dominate the hydrology of these regions and ther...

Surging outlet glaciers are important in draining large ice caps, but the mechanisms controlling surge periodicities are poorly known. We investigated a sediment sequence from the glacier-fed Lake Lögurinn in eastern Iceland, and our unique annually resolved data, based on sedimentary varves, imply that Eyjabakkajökull, an outlet glacier of Vatnajö...

High-elevation hydropower units in California might be sensitive to climate warming since they have been designed to take advantage of snowmelt and have low built-in storage capacities. Snowmelt is expected to shift to earlier in the year and the system might not be able to store sufficient water for release in high-electricity-demanding periods. P...