Indicators of sustainable water level regulation in northern river basins: a case study from the River Paatsjoki water system in northern Lapland.

Abstract

The regulation of large watercourses is nowadays a complex task. In addition to earlier objectives, which were mainly economic, more and more emphasis has to be paid to ecological and social objectives. Pressures to increase openness and dissemination have grown because of the heightened environmental awareness of different water users. The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) will bring new challenges to water resources management and increase the need to develop methods for comparing different regulation practices in lakes and rivers. Two different methods were applied to the River Paatsjoki water system in northern Lapland. The REGCEL model was applied to analyse the impact of water level fluctuation in regulated Lake Vaggatem, and the DHRAM calculation method was used to assess the impact of changed flow in the river system. Both methods provided a simple way to analyse environmental changes without time-consuming field work.