Toponyms: a neglected asset within the water framework and flood directives implementation process; the case study of Greece

Abstract

Proxy data and qualitative information are important assets in water resources and floods management. In the research, the river water bodies with characteristic toponyms (hydronyms) in Greece that potentially reflect the water’s quality or the occurrence of floods are evaluated in comparison to the European Union’s (EU) Water Framework and Flood Directives implementation process outputs. For doing so, after identifying the river water bodies with characteristic toponyms which form the 10.2% of the Greek water bodies, the toponyms are cross correlated with the water bodies quality status as retrieved by the Directives’ databases to validate the existence of linkages between the names and the quality. Similarly, the significant floods, as derived from the Flood Directive, are spatially allied with the water bodies with characteristic toponyms to ground truth the connection between significant floods and water bodies whose toponyms imply flood prone areas. The research outputs indicate a high degree of correlation both in terms of water quality and floods, meaning that in almost all cases the water body toponym depicts the good or bad quality of the water body or the occurrence of flood events. Moreover, it is established that almost 90% of the water bodies with characteristic names are intermittent and ephemeral ones. The water bodies’ toponyms, hence, are proposed as an auxiliary criterion during the Directives implementation process that could foster increased water quality and flood-related knowledge, especially in intermittent and ephemeral water bodies which are generally lacking observations, and can be applied not only in all EU-Member States’ waters, but also in global scale.