Abstract
Abstract The impact of climate change upon the hydrological regimes of streams has become an issue of major concern that requires adapted tools to detect and follow the scale of possible changes. In this study, we use a geochemical approach that exclusively relies on measurements of chemical concentrations in order to investigate the effect of climate change on the hydrological regime of the River Arve, a Franco-Swiss river running from the Alps to the River Rhône. Our method relies on the use of a dimensionless parameter, the ratio of uranium and barium concentrations in river waters. This marker has the advantage of not needing the measurement of river discharges. Its application to 25 years of data collected in the River Arve by Canton Geneva, Switzerland, leads to the conclusion that the glacio-nival signature is appearing earlier in the year and lasts for longer periods.
Highlights
The impact of climate change upon hydrological regimes and water quality has become a major issue, raising the need of adequate tools to detect both the existence and magnitude of changes (Delpla et al 2009; Blöschl et al 2017, 2019)
After initially researching geochemical tracers allowing determination of water geological print, we examined the use of a geochemical approach to establish the impact of climate change on the freshwater hydrological regime
Our goal was to extend available tools allowing the evaluation of the impact of climate change upon the hydrological cycle
Summary
The impact of climate change upon hydrological regimes and water quality has become a major issue, raising the need of adequate tools to detect both the existence and magnitude of changes (Delpla et al 2009; Blöschl et al 2017, 2019). In practice understanding chemical signatures is far from straightforward because, on the one hand, they are dependent on properties of the physical environment (e.g., porosity and hydraulic conductivity) (Garrels & Mackenzie 1967; Meybeck 1987) and, on the other hand, many factors aggregate giving a complex signature which is difficult to disentangle. In spite of these difficulties, a large number of chemical parameters have been used in order to characterise the water composition according to its origin such as isotopes, the presence of (organic and inorganic) pollutants, radioactive and radiogenic elements. Streamflow measuring and monitoring is a challenging and time-consuming task due to technical difficulties and metrological issues
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