Detection of Changes in the Hydrological Balance in Seven River Basins Along the Western Carpathians in Slovakia

Due to a changing climate, likely changes to a hydrological regime are one of the primary sources of uncertainty to consider in managing water resources. In Slovakia, a decline in the country’s water resources, combined with a change in the seasonality of runoff and an increase in the extremeness of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Slovak journal of civil engineering 2021-12, Vol.29 (4), p.49-60
Main Authors: Anita, KeszeliovÁ, Kamila, HlavČovÁ, Michaela, DanÁČovÁ, Zuzana, DanÁČovÁ, Ján, Szolgay
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air temperature
Catchment area
Catchments
Change detection
Climate
Climate change
Climatic conditions
Detection of changes
Drought
Evapotranspiration
Evapotranspiration, Budyko-Tomlain
Hydrologic regime
Hydrological balance
Hydrology
River basins
Rivers
Runoff
Seasonal variations
Seasonality
Temporal variations
Trend analysis
Water management
Water resources
Water resources management
Western Carpathians
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Summary:Due to a changing climate, likely changes to a hydrological regime are one of the primary sources of uncertainty to consider in managing water resources. In Slovakia, a decline in the country’s water resources, combined with a change in the seasonality of runoff and an increase in the extremeness of floods and droughts, represents a potential threat. The objective of the paper was to explore trends in the components of the long-term hydrological balance of various river basins to detect the impacts of changing climate conditions along the Western Carpathians. The proposed method is a comparative exploratory analysis of the hydrological balance of the selected river basins. Temporal changes in the catchments’ average air temperatures, precipitation, runoff, and their differences (considered as an index of the actual evapotranspiration), were estimated for 49 years of data; two non-overlapping sub-periods (25 and 24 years) in the seven river basins were also compared. This work also aims at evaluating the applicability of gridded inputs from the CarpatClim database for modelling the hydrological balance over an extended period. The results document the impact of the rising air temperature and, in part, local physiographic factors on the changes in runoff and actual catchment evapotranspiration.
ISSN:1338-3973
1210-3896
1338-3973
DOI:10.2478/sjce-2021-0027