Integrated River Basin Management - Science topic

I usually go to Google and search for weather data for the location of interest. I can usually find the monthly values for max and min temperatures, precipitation depth, and number of wet days. I then enter that information into our online weather generator (https://forest.Moscow fst.wsu.edu) and generate a hundred years or so of daily stochastic climate to drive our erosion models. For example, here is the information for Cairo: https://www.holiday-weather.com/cairo/averages/. I can send you more information on this method if you are interested.

It depends on what sort of data you want - often monitoring of rivers is poor, especially for sediment data. This kind of work might be useful to you:

My consideration of the question is why would an esoteric philosophical perspective from Locke alter the literally thousands of years of praxis basically based on Roman Water Law ( http://www.fao.org/3/y5692e/y5692e00.htm#Contents ), probably the oldest codification of multi-faceted tensions between common pool resources and private uses. Any 'sovereignty' claim which disregards these well established perspectives might have some temporary benefit but essentially establishes a ticking time bomb for all future transnational relationships, if not laying the track into direct military confrontation.

Thanks Dr. Darren, Dr. Hening and Dr. Guilermo, for suggestions on ADCP, it will be helpful in selection of Appropriate ADCP. Shared ADCP Report is of immense help.

Regards

Rajat

Valuable discussion.

Thanks for your valuable comments. Further work being on going, I will post the findings later on.

Dear Alireza:

Are you referring to hydropeaking? In this case you will need sub-daily data. The hydrologic statistics proposed by Richter are oriented to define environmental flows. For hydropeaking, I suggest you to read the following paper where indexes are proposed to operate reservoirs on sub-daily flow regimes.

Regards, Alvaro

All laws/ doctrines were developed by the powerful to satisfy their own greed. UN discredited itself with the 1992 Dublin Statement, declaring water as a commodity. EU water directive follows the same lines. USA has 'John Wayne' law or 'cowboy economics' as Vandana Shiva put it. The 2008 constitution of Ecuador recognized the right of nature and the ecosystems to exist and flourish, just like any living being. It gave water the status of a patrimony, which needs to be preserved for posterity, and that its provision should not be a marketable service. The Bolivian government also passed laws in 2010 and 2012 treating ‘mother earth’ as a subject of public interest. That's the spirit, "that water is the mother of all of us who nurtures us and that it is time we start nurturing her", that should be the basis of any conversation on sharing and caring of any river. NOBODY OWNS WATER, WE ALL ARE USERS. The discussions should involve all users and develop CONSENSUS on how to care for mother-water. I invite you to browse some write-ups in our project on 'water nurturing':

Refer the below paper.

Dear Roger,

A variety of hydraulic structures / primary device are used to improve the reliability of using water level as a surrogate for flow (improving the accuracy of the rating table), including: Weirs, V-notch, broad-crested, sharp-crested and combination weirs, Flumes, Parshall flume. Other equipment commonly used at permanent stream gauge include: Cableways - for suspending a hydrographer and current meter over a river to make high flow measurement, Stilling well - to provide a calm water level that can be measured by a sensor. Water level gauges: Staff (head) gauges - for a visual indication of water depth, Water pressure measuring device (Bubbler) - to measure water level via pressure (typically done directly in-stream without a stilling well), Stage encoder - a potentiometer with a wheel and pulley system connected to a float in a stilling well to provide an electronic reading of the water level, Simple ultrasonic devices - to measure water level in a stilling well or directly in a canal, Electromagnetic gauges.

With my best regards

Prof. Bachir ACHOUR

Dear Farzad, 

Once you select the Objective function type; say r2: 

A) 1=mult,2=sum,3=r2,4=chi2,5=NS,6=br2,7=ssqr,8=PBIAS,9=KGE,10=RSR,11=MNS

B) ► 0.1 : min value of objective function threshold for the behavioral solutions

Regards, 

Gebiaw

 you can use Hec-Hms that will give you thedischarge at the outlet and use the rating curve to obtain  the water level in the canal if it is a non-uniform section

Thanks William

Very nice penetrating and accurate kind of reaction. each and evry bit you wrote is correct and I 100% agree with your views and analysis. Stream flow marks are the best and most reliable data for hydrology, even surpassing modern days sensor based or other hi-tech dynamic modes of gauging flow levels either in stream or over some kind of hydraulic control structure (weir/flume etc). For any kind of hydrologic signature from any natural catchment, it is the peak flow rates which matters a most , and this peak stage of flow has direct connectivity with peak stage of flow in a channel at any given point of time....and yes..as you have very rightly said  the  peak flow marks on sides of the channel in different looks ( may be a sediment layer marks, or vegetation adherence lines or any scour or cut line in regular manner along side walls etc) are the best indicator to work out the peak stage of flow and in turn the peak discharge rates..Very nice example 'Luna Leopold' and i have generated eagerness to sail across it some time. I too have many such attempts in real ground situations, where in degraded un-accessible  forest catchments, some simplistic locally fabricated crest gauges were devised and installed putting / reusing some waste pipes and erecting them in centre / bed of channels at appropriate location and then putting some kind of light floating grounded substances like saw dust or charcoal powder at every morning and then placing a wooden stick or scale inside pipe, and visiting that pipe daily in morning by taking out the wooden scale and observing the layer of saw dust or charcoal particles whatever used ..a circular layer circumferential was easily visualized at each visit, and setting its height in accordance to channel bed, gave a good estimation of peak flow stages and in turn the peak discharge rates too. 

But still,the core theme or expectation from learned friends here, is that " if we like to simulate full hydro-graph " under given situation ( rainfall @ 24 hrs time step; discharge @ 6 hr time step) what could be the simplistic and alternative ways and options  , and which options to be used to make use of such situation where neither it is a truly gauged situation nor a truly ungauged situation. Our intention is to predict full hydrograph under varied rainfall input conditions and input rainfall is available only at 24 hours time step. while we wish to conduct calibration and validation for discharge hydrographs having time steps less than 24 hrs ( may be 3 or 6 hrs).  

for tropical situation like India, even when the base of hydrographs is in days ( as in this case), the exact duration of input rainfall (if taken as 24 hours) is full of errors/uncertainties, as exact rain or storms in real situation which are responsible to produce overland flows/channel flows are hardly of few hours (not 24 hrs) and it has great impact on shape, volume and overall hydrograph function. so at last  it could be termed a work on an ungauged catchment only   , even tough we have some data (partially guaged)..  How to harness the potential benefits of partial observations or how to transform time scales to make them identical? ( conversion of 24 hour rain fall data into 6 hour rainfall values; or taking 6 hours discharge date into a 24 hour time step value- both cases have errors/high uncertainties which are not wise to get recommended for predictions in nearby ungauged catchments ..whatever the kind and model we adopt....

Once again thanks for your nice words and giving time on mine question..

Regards

Gaur

I think you know the main hydraulic relationships governing stage discharge function.

You have:

1. a discrete relationship wetted area [Aw] as a function af stage [FWL = free water level]

2. a discrete relationship wetted perimeter [Pw] as a function of FWL

3. The speed equation: V = C*sqrt(R*So), where So is the hydraulic slope or, for lower enough stages, channel slope; R = hydraulic radius [Aw/Pw], Chezy's coefficient.

4. If your data (mainly Q) are derived from Q=Aw*V, (and I supose that is your data, because you rise the problem of rougness)  where V was measured, then C=  V/sqrt(R*So).

5. Knowing that C=power(R,1/6)/n, where n is Manning coefficient of roughness, is very simple to obtain it.

For the mountainous catchments you can use some usefull relationships for roughness, as Jarrett (1984), Thorne et Zevenbergen (1985), Bathurst (2002), Ugarte et Madrid-Aris (1994), Comiti et al (2007), Rickenmann (1990, 1991, 1994, 1996), Alonso et Fernandez (2003), Madrid – Aris (1992). Having the cross section geometry elements, and some granulometry samples, you can obtain theoretical values of roughness and compare with those resulted from your data.

If you have some patience to translate from Romanian, you can find a lot of answers about your question in my paper https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264420090_RELATII_DE_AJUSTARE_A_GEOMETRIEI_HIDRAULICE_A_ALBIILOR_MONTANE_IN_BAZINE_HIDROGRAFICE_MICI_PREDOMINANT_FORESTIERE_thesis_chapter. 

And pay attention at the stage - discharge relationship, as Mr. Hansen said. Usualy it is power function, as it results from an analysis of Q = Aw*V relationship. So you can use a log - log linear fitting instead a simply linear adjustment. More, you can ad 1 to all data (Q and FWL) and then apply log function. In that manner you can surprise also the point of zero stage and zero discharge.

An other aspect you must take into account is that of lack of coincidence of discharge at the same stage, between rising and descending parts of the hydrograph.

It was indeed nice to read apt comments by Dr.Hensen and Dr. Green. Here are some of the observations published in recent publications...

Recent research in forest hydrology points to the fact that the general assumption that more trees equal to more water is based upon our inaccurate understanding of the hydrological cycle in forest ecosystems.   This assumption has so far dominated most forest and water policy. In fact the forest ecosystem is the major user of water. With tree canopies, through interception of precipitation and evpotranspiration from foliage there is reduction in the groundwater and stream flow. Both natural and manmade forests use more water than most replacement land cover including the agriculture and grazing. This may be translated in the fact that even partial forest removal may result in the increase in the downstream water yields. Although there are some suggestions of the  removal of water-demanding forest cover as a means of preventing or mitigating droughts, especially in semi-arid regions. However, such a policy is been weighed against the consequent loss of the many other services and goods that forests supply. These include erosion control, improved water quality, carbon fixation, reduced salinization, recreation and aesthetic appeal, timber, fuelwood, other forest products, and biodiversity.

It is also well established that partial or complete removal of the tree cover accelerates water discharge, increasing the risk of flood during the rainy season and drought in the dry season. Although forest cover’s importance in regulating hydrological flows has often been overestimated, the impacts of forest cover removal are evident only at the micro-level and in association with short-duration and low intensity rainfall events (which tend to be the most frequent). As rainfall duration or intensity increases and the distance down the watershed and river basin becomes greater, other factors start to override or dwarf the effects experienced close to the deforested area. These factors include the size and morphometry of the basin, what happens in other tributary streams, the direction of the storm path and the intensity and duration of the storm

At the macro-scale, natural processes – rather than land management in the upper watershed – are responsible for flooding. Hence, although there are many good reasons for reforesting watersheds (e.g. reducing soil loss, keeping sediments out of streams, maintaining agricultural production, wildlife habitat), reducing flood risk control is certainly not one of them. Reforestation to prevent or reduce floods is effective at only a local scale of a few hundred hectares. Even on the local scale, much depends on the depth of the soil and the character of the precipitation event. Deep soils can store more water before they become saturated, and deep-rooted trees make the soil mantle more receptive for storing water from a new event. Antecedent rainfall and soil water storage have a great influence on the generation of runoff. Thus, for frequently occurring rainfall events of short duration or low intensity, forested soils may reduce or prevent flash floods locally. For the rarer prolonged or high-intensity storms, however, once the soil layer becomes saturated, water will run off, even where there is full, undisturbed forest cover. On shallow soils, especially steep ones, storage is much less and the watershed is more prone to flash floods; trees or other vegetation or land use can do little to stem the fast subsurface and overland flows.

A publication by FAO and the Center for International Forestry Research (FAO and CIFOR, 2005) has this to say: Although forests can play a certain role in delaying and reducing peak floodwater flows at local levels, scientific evidence clearly indicates that forests cannot stop catastrophic large-scale floods, commonly caused by severe meteorological events …. This in no way diminishes the need for proper management and conservation of upland forests. But it does point toward the critical need for integrated approaches in river-basin management that look beyond simplistic forest-based “solutions”.

Forests’ most significant contribution to the hydrological balance of watershed ecosystems is in maintaining high-quality water. This is achieved through minimizing soil erosion on site, reducing sediment in water bodies (wetlands, ponds and lakes, streams and rivers) and trapping/filtering other water pollutants in the forest litter and underwood. Good forest cover is the most effective land cover for keeping water as sediment-free as possible. Forest is certainly the best cover for drinking-water supply watersheds, because forestry activities involve no use of fertilizer, pesticide and fossil fuel, or outfalls from domestic sewage or industrial processes.

Have you checked the SediMeter? see lindorm.com 

This is an interesting question. Assuming that the irrigated area will not increase as a result of the shift to drip irrigation, the basin-wide irrigation water use will decrease. However, often time, the irrigated area increases. Also, very often the cropping pattern will change as a result of adopting drip irrigation. This also might have an impact on water resources basin-wide. 

Dear Amin,

http://www.ijetae.com/files/Volume3Issue5/IJETAE_0513_73.pdf  

With my best regards

Prof. Bachir ACHOUR

Hello! It is necessary to attempt to quantify components of the hydrological cycle. I believe the following links may be useful:

Best Regards

Please find attached copy of paper (in Russian) about our project in WFD direction with Belgian colleagues. It was based on following approach (in English) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285176274_Multi-Criteria_Decision_in_Nature_Resources_Use_english_version (DOI: 10,13140 / RG.2.1.3501.1926). Best regards!

Dear Farzad,

My homogenization package 'Climatol' at http://www.climatol.eu/index.html can be a good alternative to filling your missing data. If you do not want to spend time in learning how to use it, you can send me <jguijarrop@aemet.es>  your series (and coordinates X, Y, Z of the stations) and I will return them without missing data. Then, if you find those results useful, I can give you the details on how to proceed.

Best regards,

Jose

With the help of remote sensing technique you can comfortably carry out this model either in 2 or 3 dimensions. First obtain a natural color composites satellite imageries of the area from which you can trace the bathymetric shape of the river. Also a 3-D digital elevation model (in case of a 3D model) of the area can help you determine the elevations across the river (this can be obtained from google earth on special request ). You  then divide your area of interest into grids and pick the elevations (levels) base on the color chart at various interceptions. Reduce the levels based on your local datum assuming you have a reference point within the study area. With the help of the spot heights (levels), grid numbers (coordinates) you can plot a map show  the contour of the area and also pick the bathymetric shapes at different water levels/layers (depending on how many layers you want to mesh for a 3D model). After meshing, you can assume some boundary conditions like upstream and downstream velocities, slope and others if they are not available. Using finite difference method you can couple the model in 2 or 3 dimensions without visiting the site. Although you can update when you eventually have access to the required information and or parameters required. The result using this procedure can give close to 80% correlation with field data.

The health of urban river strongly correlates to health of the whole urban catchment (imprevious areas, types of surfaces, precipitation periodicity/intensity and many more). So I agree with professor Hubbart, it is important to define "river health" esp. whether you mean biological, chemical, physical conditions of stream or you want to assess the whole stream system holistically. I wish you all the best!

As Venkatesh said, you could look at the EU Water Framework Directive, it includes an Annex that specifies what should be included in the Directive's river basin management plans. Scroll down to "ANNEX VII  RIVER BASIN MANAGEMENT PLANS" in the Directive:

Thanks to Francis for linking in Hand et al.'s essay. Very interesting, and one of those concepts that's obvious...after it's pointed out. As Edward Tufte reminds us "It's More Complicated Than That!". The research implications? As usual, it's a case of a big idea that needs to be translated into testable hypotheses on scales that can be studied on practical levels. In riparian corridors, you might expect -for example- genetic variation to be more highly correlated along the corridor, where conditions are similar, than across a stream-to-upland gradient. Or maybe the opposite, depending on the organism.

Dear Faryabi,

You can try this to find.

Dear Linda,

your monitoring station is really interesting indeed. It permits to sample suspended sediment discharge in a torrent, which is a really useful data, dealing with the massive uncertainty in sediment transport.

If I understand properly, your sampler measures the suspended solid discharge.

I guess you are mainly interested in suspended discharge, even if you may consider that the bedload in small river (torrents, creeks,..) is usually much higher.

However if you are mainly interested in suspended load, you know that the big uncertainty makes your data unique.

I suggest that you can start building rating curves with your data and use a simple interpolation (linear, quadratic,..) to see if it fits sufficiently with your data. Than you have built your own rule and you can relate your 30' discharge with suspended solid discharge.

Some ideas in literature are given by the "suspended sediment rating curves" (i.e. : Crawford, C. G. (1991) Estimation of suspended-sediment rating curves and mean suspended-sediment loads Journal of Hydrology , 129, 331 - 348).

Another interesting example of article of suspended load in a creek:

Lenzi, M. A. & Marchi, L. (2000) Suspended sediment load during floods in a small stream of the Dolomites (northeastern Italy) CATENA , 39, 267 - 282

You may consider that the relation between liquid and solid discharge, often experiences hysteresis, which complicate considerably your task as the peak discharge often does not correspond with the suspended solid discharge. See for instance:

Klein M. (1984) Anti clockwise hysteresis in suspended sediment concentration during individual storms: Holbeck catchment; Yorkshire, England

CATENA, Volume 11, Issues 2–3, Pages 251–257

I think it is not useful to use classical formulas of solid transport to fill your lack of data, as those formulation are quite inaccurate for your porpouse and based on empirical formulation dependent on the site.

Cheers,

Francesco

The following references should help get you further into the reservoir - water quality effects literature.  

Bodaly, R.A., St. Louis, V.L., Paterson, M.J., Fudge, R.J.P., Hall, B.D., Rosenberg, D.M., and Rudd, J.W.M., 1997, Bioaccumulation of mercury in the aquatic food chain in newly flooded areas, in Sigel, A., and Sigel, H., eds., Metal ions in biological systems: New York, Marcel Decker, Inc., p. 259-287.

Holz, J.C., Hoagland, K.D., Spawn, R.L., Popp, A., and Anderson, J.L., 1997, Phytoplankton community response to reservoir aging, 1968-1992: Hydrobiologia, v. 346, p. 183-192.

Kelly, C.A., Rudd, J.W.M., Bodaly, R.A., Roulet, N.P., St. Louis, V.L., Heyes, A., Moore, T.R., Schiff, S., Aravena, R., Scott, K.J., Dyck, B., Harris, R., Warner, B., and Edwards, G., 1997, Increases in fluxes of greenhouse gases and methyl mercury following flooding of an experimental reservoir: Environmental Science and Technology, v. 31, no. 5, p. 1334-1344.

Rosenberg, D.M., Bodaly, R.A., and Usher, P.J., 1995, Environmental and social impacts of large scale hydroelectric development—who is listening?: Global Environmental Change, v. 5, no. 2, p. 127-148.

Rudd, J.W.M., Harris, R., Kelly, C.A., and Hecky, R.E., 1993, Are hydroelectric reservoirs significant sources of greenhouse gases?: Ambio, v. 22, no. 4, p. 246-248.

Jean,

I suggest you first see the manual of Groundwater Vistas software which is an interface for MODFLOW/MT3DMS/PEST. In this manual a very simple method of systematic trial-and-error calibration is elucidated under the title of "Automated Sensitivity Analysis". In addition, you can skip the manual calibration and directly use the autocalibration tools such as PEST and UCODE. However, you are right in saying that it is difficult to obtain appropriate autocalibration software. In fact, by Groundwater Vistas you may not be able to directly use the PEST to estimate all of the MT3MS parameters. Thus, for this case it is better to use the Visual MODLOW. This interface is more readily available (trial version: 30 days use for free) and more easy to apply. Yet, it is not possible to calibrate all the MT3DMS parameters directly via the Visual MODLOW interface, and you should use the interface of PEST which is called WinPEST. It necessitates to become familiar with details of the WinPEST operation.

All in all, if the number of your parameters is limited to a few parameters as it seems the only parameters is dispersivity, and the scale and domain of your model area is simple (homogeneous), the advisable way is to calibrate your model via the manual calibration method described in Groundwater Vistas and then compare its results with those of your autocalibration method. Nevertheless, if you want to show that your own calibration procedure is efficient, you should think about the memory and time consumption of the PC as well. 

Dear Farzin, 

The geographic coordinate for a river will be the minimum and the maximum coordinates of a bounding box containing the watershed. You can calculate it by extracting the watershed from the digital elevation model (DEM) for your outlet. 

Dear Ismaiel, 

This can be done by using hydrological models and downscaled climate data if you have observed flow at your river basin:. There will be three steps to accomplish this:

1st. BASE PERIOD Calibration of the observed flow using the observed data: You should setup your hydrological model for the base period from 196 to 2012 the data will be divided into three groups the first 2 years for warm up, 20 years of data for calibration and the remaining for validation of your calibrated model parameter sets. If the performance of the model is good at the validation period then the calibrated model parameters are trust worthy otherwise they will be rejected and you will do the calibration again until you are satisfied with the model performance. In this procedure you will get a reliable model parameters representing your watershed.

2nd. DOWNSCALING FUTURE CLIMATE: In this step you have to downscale future climate data using statistical downscaling technique, for example you might down scale climate data from 2020 to 2100. So this time you will have future rainfall, temperature and other input data for your hydrological model. You can get future climate data of different scenarios from World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal http://climatewizard.ciat.cgiar.org/index1.html

3rd. RUNNING the CALIBRATED model with the downscaled climate data. This time you don’t do the calibration but just running the calibrated model with the downscaled climate data.

Hello

This is the abstract of one paper of mine written in Persian with English abstract which fulfils some parts of your need.

Best Wishes

Response of Sedimentgraphs and Sediment Rating Loops to Land Use Type and Spatial Pattern

Abstract

Assessment of suspended sedimentgraph (SG) and rating loops are important tools for analyzing the behavior of watersheds and successful implementation of watershed management measures in reducing sediment. However, the development and analysis of SGs and rating loops and influencing factors need more attention in watershed-scale. Therefore, the present study aimed to conduct the analysis of 13 observed and simulated sedimentgraphs (SGs) during October 2011 and November 2012, in Galaz-Chai Watershed with an area of 103km2 located in West-Azarbaijan Province, Iran. Towards this attempt, the SG of observed events was derived using instantaneous unit sediment graph (IUSG) concept, and the effects of different land uses were investigated. Also, the variation and patterns of the simulated sedimentgraphs (SGs) and rating loops were plotted and interpreted with the respective land use types. Based on the results, an early peak occurred in SGs with respect to the observed hydrograph peak rates and consequently had clock-wise pattern. Increase in falling limb of hydrograph could be attributed to the participation of sediment production from agricultural land in watershed upstream. The model predicted SGs with good accuracy according to the Nash-Sutcliffe criterion (70%). Analysis of results indicated that the type and distribution pattern of different land uses had significant effect on the shape of SGs and sediment rating loops.

Key words: Land use spatial pattern, Temporal variation of suspended sediment load, Sediment yield, Spatial location of land use, Sediment availability

Rift formation has long been the focus of attention for researchers, and numerous studies have been carried out in order to understand causes and modes of whole lithospheric extension (e.g., Neumann and Ramberg, 1978; Illies, 1981; Palmason,1982; Morgan and Baker, 1983; Neugebauer, 1983; Dewey and Hancock, 1987; Keen et al., 1987; Khain, 1992; Ziegler, 1992; Ruppel, 1995; Brun, 1999; Whitmarsh et al., 2001; Corti et al., 2003). The process of lithospheric rifting is classically considered to be a product of “active rifting” or “passive rifting”, depending upon which forces are involved at the inception of rifting. Continental rifting is conventionally described as a thinning process of the whole lithosphere, ultimately leading to rupture of the continent, onset of sea-floor spreading and the consequent formation of a mid-oceanic ridge. Rifting is the initial and fundamental process by which the separation of a continent into two tectonic plates takes place. Active rifting or mantle-activated rifting has been classically ascribed to the ascent of a mantle plume impinging upon the base of the lithosphere, with consequent heating and thinning of the lithosphere. Passive rifting has been classically considered the result of horizontal stretching of the continental lithosphere, in which far-field tectonic stresses, generated at the boundaries of the lithospheric plates, result in lithosphere extension.

We study from time the passive continental rifting leading to opening of the fossil Jurassic Ligurian Tethys oceanic basin, by investigating the structural ad petrologic features recorded in the mantle peridotites of the Alpine-Apennine orogeny (North-West Italy), that represent the direct exposure in nature of the mantle lithosphere of the basin. Passive lithosphere extension is testified by km-scale extensional shear zones, induced by far field tectonic forces, which thinned the sub-continental lithosphere and caused the passive upwelling of the asthenosphere (the passive a-magmatic rifting stage). After significant adiabatic upwelling, asthenosphere underwent decompression melting and the melts infiltrated through the extending lithospheric mantle by diffuse porous flow, frequently exploiting porosity bands of former shear zones (the passive magmatic rifting stage). Deformation and melt percolation interacted and mutually enhanced, strongly modifying the rheological characteristics of the mantle lithosphere along the axial zone of rifting (forming a weakened/softened mantle wedge). The passive rifting system changed to splitting and continental break-up, passing to an active rifting system in the case deeper/hotter asthenosphere actively upwelled within the axial zone of weakened mantle lithosphere.

Hi Protogene,

Much of the Russian landmass drains to the Arctic Ocean, and these basins have been investigated a lot in Arctic research. There is a set of daily discharge data available here:

At the bottom there's a link to "Russian Daily Discharge Data from NSF-funded UCLA/UNH project".

I also attach one of my papers where we synthesized all pan-Arctic river monitoring data, a lot of which is from Russia. Perhaps it can be of use.

Best of luck,

Arvid

The NWSRFS system has been replaced by FEWS (flood early warning system) developed and maintained by Deltares. Perhaps you could contact Office of Hydrological Development (OHD) of NWS?

Xaio Jian Your challenge is a worthy one ~ in June this year I spent a week studying the Hei He watershed with a team from Taiyuan. The conditions of the watershed and its floodplain ecosystems are so profoundly disrupted and degraded they are bordering on the irreparable. As a result, standard eco-hydro models will not work....

You have no other choice than to map the habitats and regoliths of the watershed and floodplain to model their geospatial relationships to reveal the ecological dysfunctions disrupting hydrological cycles. Until ecological dysfunctions are repaired, the hydrological situation will remain chaotic and unpredictable.

In the June issue of Ecological Indicators, Elsevier published a paper on Auditing Reforested Watersheds on the Loess Plateau. It outlined a Watershed iGiS used for auditing watersheds for compliance with UN A21 principles. True image based Geospatial intelligence Systems allow trans-disciplinary integration of ecological, hydrological and economic parameters. It has been used successfully in Australia and NZ to audit the ecological/hydrological/landuse performance of watersheds... and to provide a platform for developing repair strategies.

Watershed iGiS was the method used to integrate the work of 5 Australian universities to in a $5.5million R&D project to map and model floodplain aquifers and their relationships to healthy streams and sustainable landuse systems. The science is described in UNESCO's digital encyclopedia of life support systems EOLSS Habitat and Riparian Management in Rangeland Ecosystems ... Google EOLSS and the title for access...

Feel free to contact me for further comments on the Hei He watershed.... and trans-disciplinary methods for watershed and river research...

Haikai Tane

You will get the literature by search on River training work for the flood management and control make a title search on Google scholar and book mark the relevant articles

Many factors have impact on the erosion processes in watersheds. In my opinion, the most significant factors are climate, relief, geological substrate and pedological composition, as well as land use.

I am personally using IntErO model (Spalevic, 2011), with the Erosion potential analytical method (Gavrilovic, 1972) embedded in the algorithm of this computer-graphic method, simulating runoff and sediment yield. The Erosion potential method (EPM) is the most suitable on catchment level (river basin and/or sub basin) for the watershed management needs in the South East European Region.

This method is in use in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, Iran, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia, as well as in some countries of Central and East Europe: Czech Republic and Bulgaria (Kostadinov et al., 2014). The EPM is distinguished by its high degree of reliability in calculating sediment yields as well as transport and reservoir sedimentation (Ristic et al., 2011). The method was first calibrated in Serbia (Gavrilovic, 1972) and also validated for the Polimlje region of Montenegro in the period from 1999 to 2011 using the observed/measured sediment yield values from the Potpec accumulation on the river Lim (Spalevic, 2011).

Catchment characteristics that I am analysing / processing, using the IntErO model for the processing of soil erosion intensity are the following: River basin area (km²); The area of the bigger and smaller river basin part (km²); Natural length of the main watercourse (km); Shortest distance between fountain head and mouth (km); The length of the main watercourse with tributaries (km); River basin length - series of parallel lines, according to Biolchev (km); Altitude of the first contour line (m); Equidistance (m); The lowest river basin elevation (m); The highest river basin elevation (m); A part of the river basin with a very permeable rocks, medium permeable rocks, poor water permeability rocks; A part of the river basin under forests, under grass, and orchards, a part without grass vegetation; The volume of the torrent rain (mm); Average annual air temperature (°C); Average annual precipitation (mm); Types of soils; River basin planning; Numeral equivalents of visible erosion process.

References (for this comment):

Gavrilovic, S. (1972): Inzenjering o bujicnim tokovima i eroziji. Izgradnja. Beograd.

Kostadinov S., Zlatic M., Dragicevic S., Novkovic I., Kosanin O., Borisavljevic A., Lakicevic M., Mlađan D. (2014): Anthropogenic influence on erosion intensity changes in the Rasina River watershed - Central Serbia. Fresenius Environmental Bulletin 01/2014; 23(1a):254-263.

Ristic, R., B. Radic, N. Vasiljevic and Z. Nikic (2011): Land use change for flood protection - a prospective study for the restoration of the river Jelasnica watershed. Bulletin of the Faculty of Forestry 103: 115-130.

Spalevic, V. (2011): Impact of land use on runoff and soil erosion in Polimlje. Doctoral thesis, 260p, Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Belgrade, Serbia.

See also some papers available on the following link:

@Dear All, Thanks a lot for your valuable inputs, useful recommended papers/softwares.

@ Valery, Good point.

@ Martin, thanks for your explanation on the terms used.

Given the complexity of watershed issues, and a really "INTEGRATED" management, we need for integrated solutions (Considering whole system rather than attend to individual problems)

Linking it all together (land, water, vegetation, biodiversity, local communities and cultures, stakeholders)

Going to the main question, I want to concentrate on the "INTEGRATION ENGINE"

The role of integration engine is pulling together the components of biophysical, socio-economic, and ecologic models. In other hand I am looking for a step before the final decision. (Australian experiences are more useful)

I'm looking for a framework leading to an informed decision/s in watershed scale (may a DSS platform).

Again thanks.

Regards,

I am looking for guidance for doing higher research and finding a better answer to the process of integrated model development in earthquake forecast design

First you need to categorize basins according to whether they have rivers that run through them and exit to oceans, or whether they are closed, and the water and

materials enter, but the water exits by evaporation or by subsurface movement.

Basins in conjunction with parallel Mountain ranges are lateral compression

wave forms. The mountains move upward and are vertically unconstrained,

but the downward movement of the basins is vertically constrained by the

crustal layers below. The result is taller mountains and shallower basins.

Rivers remove material from the basin, while mountains feed material to the basin.

The closed basins of the Western United States are an easier study in that the

material remains in an essentially closed system. The oldest basins and shortest

mountain ranges are near the western coast of the US. The younger basins,

and taller mountains are farther eastward into the continent. The basins formed by

a sequence or " block roll overs" from west to east over the last 60 million years.

They are still forming in western Colorado along the Western Slope.

There is thus a sequential " snapshot " of basins formations in the western US.

between California and Colorado, without the complicating problems of

material removal by rivers in some of the basins.