INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT OF A LARGE RIVER BASIN IN THE CONTEXT OF CLIMATE CHANGE: CLIMATE, HYDROLOGY AND POLLUTION IN THE EBRO BASIN, SPAIN

* Bovolo, C I (Isabella.Bovolo@ncl.ac.uk) , Newcastle University, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU United Kingdom

* C. Isabella Bovolo, Hayley J. Fowler, Stephen Blenkinsop, Aidan Burton, Claudius M. Bürger, Alberto Bellin, Mauricio Zambrano Bigiarini, Bruno Majone, Daniele Alberici, Damià Barceló, Peter Grathwohl and Johannes Barth

The European Water Framework Directive encourages the management of a river at a basin scale requiring an understanding of the interdependencies between the physical environment and local hydrology, ecology and climate. The current and future climate of the Spanish Ebro river basin and the Gállego (a tributary), plus the hydrology and behaviour of environmental pollutants with respect to climate change have been studied extensively within the EU AquaTerra (AT) project. New and recent AT climate, hydrology and ecology (pollutant) studies are combined and presented here in order to gain an integrated, holistic view of the basin for management purposes. AT climate studies suggest that the Ebro will become significantly hotter and drier, especially in summer: for example, in the Gallego, regional climate models suggest that daily temperature will increase on average by +4.2 to +4.7 C whilst precipitation will decrease on average by 18 to 22% by the 2080s. These future climate scenarios have been used as input to semi-distributed hydrological models of the Gállego and Ebro to simulate the impacts of climate change on the basins. The models have been shown to simulate river flows accurately providing good quality meteorological data is available. AT pollutant studies show that persistent organic pollutants such as DDT are found in high concentrations near industrial sites, and heavy metal, pesticide and nutrient pollution is widespread. Problems of poor water quality in the basin may be exacerbated in periods of low water flow as pollutants will accumulate due to a lack of dilution. Additionally AT studies on fish show that brominated flame retardants are bioavailable and bioaccumulate with potentially serious health effects. Changing climate patterns may influence degradation, turnover, sorption and transport behaviour of pollutant contamination with unknown effects. These studies have large implications for future integrated basin management strategies in the Ebro.