Hydromorphological typology of watercourses in Slovenia

Project description 

Sustainable water management is one of the key topics of sustainable development. With the adoption of the Water Framework Directive, the European Union has set itself the goal of achieving good water status by 2027. In this research, we address the issue of the importance of knowing the various hydromorphological characteristics of watercourses for successful water management (Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC, the Danube River Basin Management Plan for the period 2023-2027 and the Adriatic Sea River Basin Management Plan for the period 2023-2027), which is directly related to the assessment of the impacts of interventions on the hydromorphological status of watercourses, for which guidelines must be prepared for the implementation of interventions on watercourses. For a more detailed definition of the hydromorphological characteristics of watercourses, the European standard SIST EN 14614:2020 Water quality – Guidance standard for assessing the hydromorphological features of rivers was developed, which determines the method of defining hydromorphological types of watercourses. In addition to the aforementioned standard, numerous methodologies and contributions to the development of methodologies for determining hydromorphological types have been developed in the past, also in Slovenia. In the research project, we will first examine, in addition to the European standard, the developed methods of hydromorphological typing of watercourses, as well as contributions developed in Slovenia, and meaningfully include them in the development of Slovenian hydromorphological typing. Based on a review of methodologies and findings, we will develop a methodology for hydromorphological typing of watercourses, which will be based on hydromorphological characteristics important for watercourses in Slovenia. First, we will prepare spatial units for the development of hydromorphological typing, which takes into account the hierarchical organization of watercourses. The river network in the territory of the country of Slovenia will be delimited into spatial units according to the concept of a hierarchically structured system as provided for in the SIST EN 14614:2020 standard. Spatial levels from regions to river sections will be primarily defined on the basis of natural conditions, and anthropogenic impacts or hydromorphological loads will also be taken into account when determining subsections. The aim of the delimitation will be to obtain spatial units with relatively homogeneous environmental characteristics – parameter values (e.g. sinusoidality, degree of branching and interweaving of the riverbed and the dominant substrate type). For spatial units whose delimitation will be based on the simultaneous consideration of several parameters (e.g. landscape units, sections and subsections), the final delimitation will be determined based on a combination of several layers in such a way that the greatest possible internal consistency of the considered parameters will be achieved in an individual spatial unit. When determining the values of some parameters (e.g. dominant riverbed substrate, dominant stream type), we will use existing data obtained from the inventory of hydromorphological characteristics of watercourses in the development of methods for assessing ecological status. Spatial and environmental data will be combined and analyzed within the framework of a geographic information system using the ArcGIS software (Esri, 2014) and some extensions (e.g. Spatial Analyst, ArcHydro, VCA). For spatial units with missing data on selected characteristics, we will conduct inventories of hydromorphological characteristics in the field. For the selected parameters, we will perform a co-occurrence analysis and prepare a description and layer of hydromorphological types of watercourses with a catchment area >10 km2. Finally, we will compare the developed layer of hydromorphological types with the layers of ecological types and fish types and provide an assessment of the correspondence.  

Project team composition 

• Gorazd Urbanic
• Igor Zelnik
• Mateja Germ
• Alexandra Golob
• Nik Ojdanic
• Miha Knehtl
• Luka Javornik
• Barbara Debeljak
• Maja Pavlin Urbanic
• David Rich
• David Halozan