Abstract
The flow regime in the River Vistula is influenced by climatic and geographical factors and human intervention. In this study, we focus on an analysis of flow and precipitation variability over time and space following the course of the River Vistula. Multi-purpose statistical analyses of a number of runoff and precipitation characteristics were performed to present a general overview of the temporal and spatial changes. Since the important feature of the hydrological regime of Polish rivers is the seasonality of runoff associated with the occurrence of cold (winter) and warm (summer) seasons within a hydrological year, a seasonal approach is applied to describe specific seasonal features that can be masked when using annual data. In general, the results confirm popular impressions about changes in winter season runoff characteristics, i.e., significantly decreasing daily maxima, increasing daily minima and a decrease in concentration, and so a bigger uniformity of winter daily flows. An interesting behaviour of minimum flows in the summer has been revealed, which is contrary to social perceptions and the alarming changes taking place in the other parts of the world. Additionally, precipitation indexes related to the formation of droughts show no trends, e.g., the mean value of the maximum dry spell length.
Highlights
The flow regime in the River Vistula is influenced by climatic and geographical factors and human intervention
The autocorrelation in the series of characteristics used in this study revealed that 16% of the proposed runoff characteristics along the Vistula’s course suffer from significant autocorrelation
The marks represent the diagonal lines from the upper left corner to the lower to show that the value can decrease if autocorrelation is takenRunoff into account and the Station is true forMax the cases whenMin the autocorrelation causes an increase the presented value
Summary
The flow regime in the River Vistula is influenced by climatic and geographical factors and human intervention. Growing human pressures on the environment and especially on water resources along with global warming and its impacts on the water cycle require constant monitoring of changes in precipitation and the river’s hydrological regime in order to assess the situation and point out harbingers of possible threats. This is usually done by increasing the number of observations and by extending the scope of the analysed characteristics and research tools used. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
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