Картографирование современного состояния и трансформации водного режима рек Европейской территории России

Abstract

Water regime of rivers is an important characteristic of the surface land waters as a natural environment component and object of economic use. The reaction of the rivers’ water regime to the climatic changes, including the case of extreme hydro-meteorological events, has not been studied carefully yet. It is necessary to adapt the water part of national economy to the current trends and characteristics of rivers’ water and ice regime. The analysis and inventory of these trends are required to make appropriate decisions. The authors present the methodology and the results of mapping the current European Russia rivers’ water regime and its modern transformation. The resulting map series includes the maps of the season beginning months, the coefficient of natural flow regulation, the average runoff depth for the "historical" period, extreme monthly equal discharge rate, the ratio of average monthly discharge between seasons, the runoff depth in the "modern" period and its change compared to the "historical" one, a map of water regime transformation, as well as a number of supplementary climatic maps reflecting changes in temperature and precipitation regime. The obtained maps allowed revealing numerous spatiotemporal tendencies, including intensification of the hydrological cycle; the increase in the annual runoff depth in the middle of the East European Plain; increase of absolute unevenness of summer low-water runoff and decrease of relative unevenness; the decrease of maximum discharge; significant change of the ratio of discharge components for the most rivers of the European Russia, the most important feature of which is decreasing the share of snowmelting component.