Abstract
It is not clear how projected climate change will impact the hydrological functioning of complex catchments that have significant karst characteristics. Therefore, in this paper we focused on the investigation of the low- and high-flow characteristics of the karst Ljubljanica River catchment. One smaller (51 km2) and one larger (1135 km2) catchment were selected in order to investigate the projected climate change impact on the hydrological conditions. For the investigation of the hydrological situation in the future, we used a lumped conceptual hydrological model. The model was calibrated using past measured daily data. Using the calibrated model, we investigated the impact of five different climate models outputs for the moderately optimistic scenario (RCP4.5). We investigated the situation in next 30-years periods: 2011–2040, 2041–2070, and 2071–2100. Several low and high-flow indices were calculated and compared. The results indicate that a summer precipitation decrease (i.e., 2011–2070) could lead to lower low-flow values for the investigated areas, which could increase the vulnerability of karst areas. Thus, additional focus should be given to water resource management in karst areas. On the other hand, mean flow could increase in the future. The same also applies for the high-flows where flood frequency analysis results indicate that a climate adaptation factor could be used for the hydrotechnical engineering design. However, differences among investigated models are large and show large variability among investigated cases.
Highlights
A temperature increase, related to climate changes in the future, is expected to influence the runoff dynamics in different parts of the world [1]
It can be expected that karst rivers, such as Ljubljanica River, are more vulnerable than non-karst rivers because they can be characterized by the fast flow through underground conduits and relatively small groundwater storage
This can mean that a decrease in the low flows in the future could result in reduced groundwater availability
Summary
A temperature increase, related to climate changes in the future, is expected to influence the runoff dynamics in different parts of the world [1]. Additional analysis and modelling should be carried out in order to investigate effects of the abovementioned changes on low- and high-flow dynamics of rivers at different catchment scales. This kind of investigation is especially important in karst systems because the vulnerability of these systems is large and a potential change in the low-flow dynamics can have significant impact on the groundwater characteristics in karst areas [2]. One of the most frequently used methods to detect changes in environmental series is to perform statistical tests [1,3,4,5,6,7]
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