Changes in Latvian river discharge regime at the turn of the century

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 554-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elga Apsīte ◽  
Ilze Rudlapa ◽  
Inese Latkovska ◽  
Didzis Elferts

The study deals with turn-of-the-century changes in the total annual river runoff distribution and high and low flows in Latvia, covering river basins within four hydrological districts which vary according to size and physiographical conditions. Mathematical statistical methods were applied in the analysis of river discharge data series for two study periods of 1951–2009 and 1881–2009. The present results confirm the basic statement concerning the Baltic countries that major significant changes in river runoff during the last two decades have occurred between spring (decrease) and winter (increase) seasons. Mostly insignificant changes in summer runoff and significant/insignificant changes in autumn runoff were found. Analysis shows that a statistically significant trend of increase in low flow for the cold period and a significant trend of decrease in the high discharge and coefficient d of uneven runoff distribution were detected. Changes in river hydrological regime are mainly caused by changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation processes following climate warming, which has taken place. Latvian river hydrography has therefore changed and become more similar to Western European rivers.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1765-1782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuele Bevacqua ◽  
Michalis I. Vousdoukas ◽  
Theodore G. Shepherd ◽  
Mathieu Vrac

Abstract. Interacting storm surges and high water runoff can cause compound flooding (CF) in low-lying coasts and river estuaries. The large-scale CF hazard has been typically studied using proxies such as the concurrence of storm surge extremes either with precipitation or with river discharge extremes. Here the impact of the choice of such proxies is addressed employing state-of-the-art global datasets. Although they are proxies of diverse physical mechanisms, we find that the two approaches show similar CF spatial patterns. On average, deviations are smaller in regions where assessing the actual CF is more relevant, i.e. where the CF potential is high. Differences between the two assessments increase with the catchment size, and our findings indicate that CF in long rivers (catchment ≳5–10×103 km2) should be analysed using river discharge data. The precipitation-based assessment allows for considering local-rainfall-driven CF and CF in small rivers not resolved by large-scale datasets.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Changjun Gao ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Lijuan Cui ◽  
Qiongfang Ma ◽  
Jian Cai

AbstractThe terrestrial environment of a watershed is a source of potential carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) exports, and the hydrological regime provides the mechanism to turn the potential exports into reality when water is available. However, the extent to which the terrestrial environment alters the strength and nature of streamflow in transporting stream water nutrient ratios remains largely unknown. This study combined monthly stream discharge data with synchronously sampled stream water C:N:P ratios in 14 catchment streams in the Xitiao River Basin (XRB) in Zhejiang Province, China. The transport effect of streamflow on C:N:P ratios varied depending on the nutrient element, flow condition, and terrestrial environment. In the lower reaches of the XRB, there were negative relationships between C:N ratios, C:P ratios and watershed discharge, and positive relationships between N:P ratios and watershed discharge in both high and low flow conditions. In the middle and upper reaches of the XRB, the C:N-discharge relationship changed from negative to positive when the streamflow conditions altered from low to high flow. The C:P- and N:P-discharge relationships were negative regardless of high or low flows, but the regression coefficient significantly decreased with increasing streamflow. The C:N-discharge correlation over the course of the year shifted from negative to positive, as urban areas expanded within the catchment. The C:P-discharge relationship altered from negative to positive with more cropland and wetland but from positive to negative with a greater forest percentage and mean percentage slope. Our results indicate that changes in the terrestrial environment (e.g., the proportion of a particular land cover within a watershed) generally produced a threshold flow above which the coupling relationships between element fluxes from the terrestrial to riverine ecosystem changed sharply.


Author(s):  
Diana SARAUSKIENE ◽  
Jurate KRIAUCIUNIENE ◽  
Alvina REIHAN ◽  
Maris KLAVINS

Estimation of both the frequency and variation of spring floods is a key issue for the assessment and management of flood risks. Changes in river floods in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have been investigated in few national studies. However, there are no studies of the changes of flood patterns by using a common methodology for the rivers of this region. In this study flood pattern changes in the rivers of the Baltic countries were estimated applying trend and frequency analysis for the periods of 1922–2010, 1922–1960, 1961–2010 and 1991–2010, i.e. for the whole spring flood data sets, periods before and after 1960 (this year was considered as the beginning of the remarkable climate change), as well as for the two past decades. A comparative study of five probability distributions was performed in order to estimate which distribution at best represents statistical characteristics of the flood data. The results showed that maximum discharges of spring floods decreased over the whole studied period. Only some insignificant positive trends of maximum discharges were found in the last time period in continental and transitional rivers. Generalized extreme value distribution provided the best approximation to the maximum discharge data series of the rivers of Baltic countries for the whole observation period.


Author(s):  
Andrejs Timuhins ◽  
Valērijs Rodinovs ◽  
Māris Kļaviņš

Wavelet analysis of the Baltic region river runoff longh-term trends and fluctuations The study of changes in river discharge and flood regime can provide important information on climate change and its impacts. Wavelet analysis offers new possibilities to study changes of river discharge patterns in regard to periodical processes on a background of climate change. In this study wavelet analysis was used to study long-term changes of river discharge in the Baltic region. Periodic oscillations of discharge intensity, and low- and high-water flow years are common for the major rivers in the Eastern Baltic region. Main frequencies of river discharge were estimated to be 14, 28, 37 years for the studied rivers. Wavelet analysis allowed to identify similarities between the river discharge regime, and thus, the factors influencing it. Years of maximal and minimal discharges for major rivers were identified and the impact of large-scale atmospheric circulation processes on the river discharge was studied.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuele Bevacqua ◽  
Michalis I. Vousdoukas ◽  
Theodore G. Shepherd ◽  
Mathieu Vrac

Abstract. Interacting storm surges and high water-runoff can cause compound flooding (CF) in low-lying coasts and river estuaries. The large-scale CF hazard has been typically studied using proxies such as the concurrence of storm surge extremes either with precipitation or with river discharge extremes. Here the impact of the choice of such proxies is addressed employing state-of-the-art global datasets. Although being proxies of diverse physical mechanisms, we find that the two approaches show similar CF spatial patterns. However, deviations increase with the catchment size and our findings indicate that CF in long rivers (catchment ≳ 5–10 000 Km2) is more accurately analysed using river discharge data. The precipitation-based assessment allows for considering local rainfall-driven CF, and CF in small rivers not resolved by large-scale datasets.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Diederen ◽  
Ye Liu ◽  
Ben Gouldby ◽  
Ferdinand Diermanse ◽  
Sergiy Vorogushyn

Abstract. Flood risk assessments are required for long-term planning, e.g. for investments in infrastructure and other urban capital. Vorogushyn et al. (2018) call for new methods in large-scale Flood Risk Assessment (FRA) to enable the capturing of system interactions and feedbacks. With the increase of computational power, large-scale, continental FRAs have recently become feasible (Ward et al., 2013; Alfieri et al., 2014; Dottori et al., 2016; Vousdoukas, 2016; Winsemius et al., 2016; Paprotny et al., 2017). Flood events cause large damages worldwide (Desai et al., 2015). Moreover, widespread flooding can potentially cause large damage in a short time window. Therefore, large-scale (e.g. pan-European) events and for instance maximum probable damages are of interest, in particular for the (re)insurance industry, because they want to know the chance of their widespread portfolio of assets getting affected by large-scale events (Jongman et al., 2014). Using a pan-European data set of modelled, gridded river discharge data, we tracked discharge waves in all major European river basins. We synthetically generated a large catalogue of synthetic, pan-European events, consisting of spatially coherent discharge peak sets.


BMC Ecology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna L. K. Nilsson ◽  
Thomas Skaugen ◽  
Trond Reitan ◽  
Jan Henning L’Abée-Lund ◽  
Marlène Gamelon ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Earlier breeding is one of the strongest responses to global change in birds and is a key factor determining reproductive success. In most studies of climate effects, the focus has been on large-scale environmental indices or temperature averaged over large geographical areas, neglecting that animals are affected by the local conditions in their home ranges. In riverine ecosystems, climate change is altering the flow regime, in addition to changes resulting from the increasing demand for renewable and clean hydropower. Together with increasing temperatures, this can lead to shifts in the time window available for successful breeding of birds associated with the riverine habitat. Here, we investigated specifically how the environmental conditions at the territory level influence timing of breeding in a passerine bird with an aquatic lifestyle, the white-throated dipper Cinclus cinclus. We relate daily river discharge and other important hydrological parameters, to a long-term dataset of breeding phenology (1978–2015) in a natural river system. Results Dippers bred earlier when winter river discharge and groundwater levels in the weeks prior to breeding were high, and when there was little snow in the catchment area. Breeding was also earlier at lower altitudes, although the effect dramatically declined over the period. This suggests that territories at higher altitudes had more open water in winter later in the study period, which permitted early breeding also here. Unexpectedly, the largest effect inducing earlier breeding time was territory river discharge during the winter months and not immediately prior to breeding. The territory river discharge also increased during the study period. Conclusions The observed earlier breeding can thus be interpreted as a response to climate change. Measuring environmental variation at the scale of the territory thus provides detailed information about the interactions between organisms and the abiotic environment.


2008 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maris Klavins ◽  
Valery Rodinov

The study of changes in river discharge is important for regional climate variability characterization and for development of an efficient water resource management system. The hydrological regime of rivers and their long-term changes in Latvia were investigated. Four major types of river hydrological regimes, which depend on climatic and physicogeographic factors, were characterized. These factors are linked to the changes observed in river discharge. Periodic oscillations of discharge, and low- and high-water flow years are common for the major rivers in Latvia. A main frequency of river discharge regime changes of about 20 and 13 years was estimated for the studied rivers. A significant impact of climate variability on the river discharge regime has been found.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Yilinuer Alifujiang ◽  
Jilili Abuduwaili ◽  
Yongxiao Ge

This study investigated the temporal patterns of annual and seasonal river runoff data at 13 hydrological stations in the Lake Issyk-Kul basin, Central Asia. The temporal trends were analyzed using the innovative trend analysis (ITA) method with significance testing. The ITA method results were compared with the Mann-Kendall (MK) trend test at a 95% confidence level. The comparison results revealed that the ITA method could effectively identify the trends detected by the MK trend test. Specifically, the MK test found that the time series percentage decreased from 46.15% in the north to 25.64% in the south, while the ITA method revealed a similar rate of decrease, from 39.2% to 29.4%. According to the temporal distribution of the MK test, significantly increasing (decreasing) trends were observed in 5 (0), 6 (2), 4 (3), 8 (0), and 8 (1) time series in annual, spring, summer, autumn, and winter river runoff data. At the same time, the ITA method detected significant trends in 7 (1), 9 (3), 6(3), 9 (3), and 8 (2) time series in the study area. As for the ITA method, the “peak” values of 24 time series (26.97%) exhibited increasing patterns, 25 time series (28.09%) displayed increasing patterns for “low” values, and 40 time series (44.94%) showed increasing patterns for “medium” values. According to the “low”, “medium”, and “peak” values, five time series (33.33%), seven time series (46.67%), and three time series (20%) manifested decreasing trends, respectively. These results detailed the patterns of annual and seasonal river runoff data series by evaluating “low”, “medium”, and “peak” values.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arkadiusz Bartczak ◽  
Ryszard Glazik ◽  
Sebastian Tyszkowski

Abstract The article presents the results of research into the transformation of series of hydro-meteorological data for determining dry periods with the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardised Discharge Index (SDI). Time series from eight precipitation stations and five series of river discharge data in Eastern Kujawy (central Poland) were analysed for 1951–2010. The frequency distribution of the series for their convergence with the normal distribution was tested with the Shapiro–Wilk test and homogeneity with the Bartlett's test. The transformation of the series was done with the Box–Cox technique, which made it possible to homogenise the series in terms of variance. In Poland, the technique has never been used to determine the SPI. After the transformation the distributions of virtually all series complied with the normal distribution and were homogeneous. Moreover, a statistically significant correlation between the δ transformation parameter and the skewness of the series of monthly precipitation was observed. It was similar for the series of mean monthly discharges in the winter half-year and the hydrological year. The analysis indicates an alternate occurrence of dry and wet periods both in case of precipitation and run-offs. Drought periods coincided with low flow periods. Thus, the fluctuations tend to affect the development of agriculture more than long-term ones.


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