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The scope of this study is to investigate the environmental change in the German part of the Elbe river basin, whereby the focus is on two water related problems: having too little water and having water of poor quality. The Elbe region is representative of humid to semi-humid landscapes in central Europe, where water availability during the summer season is the limiting factor for plant growth and crop yields, especially in the loess areas, where the annual precipitation is lower than 500 mm. It is most likely that water quantity problems will accelerate in future, because both the observed and the projected climate trend show an increase in temperature and a decrease in annual precipitation, especially in the summer. Another problem is nutrient pollution of rivers and lakes. In the early 1990s, the Elbe was one of the most heavily polluted rivers in Europe. Even though nutrient emissions from point sources have notably decreased in the basin due to reduction of industrial sources and introduction of new and improved sewage treatment facilities, the diffuse sources of pollution are still not sufficiently controlled. The investigations have been done using the eco-hydrological model SWIM (Soil and Water Integrated Model), which has been embedded in a model framework of climate and agro-economic models. A global scenario of climate and agro-economic change has been regionalized to generate transient climate forcing data and land use boundary conditions for the model. The model was used to transform the climate and land use changes into altered evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge, crop yields and river discharge, and to investigate the development of water quality in the river basin. Particular emphasis was given to assessing the significance of the impacts on the hydrology, taking into account in the analysis the inherent uncertainty of the regional climate change as well as the uncertainty in the results of the model. The average trend of the regional climate change scenario indicates a decrease in mean annual precipitation up to 2055 of about 1.5 %, but with high uncertainty (covering the range from -15.3 % to +14.8 %), and a less uncertain increase in temperature of approximately 1.4 K. The relatively small change in precipitation in conjunction with the change in temperature leads to severe impacts on groundwater recharge and river flow. Increasing temperature induces longer vegetation periods, and the seasonality of the flow regime changes towards longer low flow spells in summer. As a results the water availability will decrease on average of the scenario simulations by approximately 15 %. The increase in temperatures will improve the growth conditions for temperature limited crops like maize. The uncertainty of the climate trend is particularly high in regions where the change is the highest. The simulation results for the Nuthe subbasin of the Elbe indicate that retention processes in groundwater, wetlands and riparian zones have a high potential to reduce the nitrate concentrations of rivers and lakes in the basin, because they are located at the interface between catchment area and surface water bodies, where they are controlling the diffuse nutrient inputs. The relatively high retention of nitrate in the Nuthe basin is due to the long residence time of water in the subsurface (about 40 years), with good conditions for denitrification, and due to nitrate retention and plant uptake in wetlands and riparian zones. The concluding result of the study is that the natural environment and communities in parts of Central Europe will have considerably lower water resources under scenario conditions. The water quality will improve, but due to the long residence time of water and nutrients in the subsurface, this improvement will be slower in areas where the conditions for nutrient turn-over in the subsurface are poor.
Studies of the role of disturbance in vegetation or ecosystems showed that disturbances are an essential and intrinsic element of ecosystems that contribute substantially to ecosystem health, to structural diversity of ecosystems and to nutrient cycling at the local as well as global level. Fire as a grassland, bush or forest fire is a special disturbance agent, since it is caused by biotic as well abiotic environmental factors. Fire affects biogeochemical cycles and plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry by releasing climate-sensitive trace gases and aerosols, and thus in the global carbon cycle by releasing approximately 3.9 Gt C p.a. through biomass burning. A combined model to describe effects and feedbacks between fire and vegetation became relevant as changes in fire regimes due to land use and land management were observed and the global dimension of biomass burnt as an important carbon flux to the atmosphere, its influence on atmospheric chemistry and climate as well as vegetation dynamics were emphasized. The existing modelling approaches would not allow these investigations. As a consequence, an optimal set of variables that best describes fire occurrence, fire spread and its effects in ecosystems had to be defined, which can simulate observed fire regimes and help to analyse interactions between fire and vegetation dynamics as well as to allude to the reasons behind changing fire regimes. Especially, dynamic links between vegetation, climate and fire processes are required to analyse dynamic feedbacks and effects of changes of single environmental factors. This led us to the point, where new fire models had to be developed that would allow the investigations, mentioned above, and could help to improve our understanding of the role of fire in global ecology. In conclusion of the thesis, one can state that moisture conditions, its persistence over time and fuel load are the important components that describe global fire pattern. If time series of a particular region are to be reproduced, specific ignition sources, fire-critical climate conditions and vegetation composition become additional determinants. Vegetation composition changes the level of fire occurrence and spread, but has limited impact on the inter-annual variability of fire. The importance to consider the full range of major fire processes and links to vegetation dynamics become apparent under climate change conditions. Increases in climate-dependent length of fire season does not automatically imply increases in biomass burnt, it can be buffered or accelerated by changes in vegetation productivity. Changes in vegetation composition as well as enhanced vegetation productivity can intensify changes in fire and lead to even more fire-related emissions. --- Anmerkung: Die Autorin ist Trägerin des von der Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Potsdam vergebenen Michelson-Preises für die beste Promotion des Jahres 2002/2003.
Semi-arid areas are, due to their climatic setting, characterized by small water resources. An increasing water demand as a consequence of population growth and economic development as well as a decreasing water availability in the course of possible climate change may aggravate water scarcity in future, which often exists already for present-day conditions in these areas. Understanding the mechanisms and feedbacks of complex natural and human systems, together with the quantitative assessment of future changes in volume, timing and quality of water resources are a prerequisite for the development of sustainable measures of water management to enhance the adaptive capacity of these regions. For this task, dynamic integrated models, containing a hydrological model as one component, are indispensable tools. The main objective of this study is to develop a hydrological model for the quantification of water availability in view of environmental change over a large geographic domain of semi-arid environments. The study area is the Federal State of Ceará (150 000 km2) in the semi-arid north-east of Brazil. Mean annual precipitation in this area is 850 mm, falling in a rainy season with duration of about five months. Being mainly characterized by crystalline bedrock and shallow soils, surface water provides the largest part of the water supply. The area has recurrently been affected by droughts which caused serious economic losses and social impacts like migration from the rural regions. The hydrological model Wasa (Model of Water Availability in Semi-Arid Environments) developed in this study is a deterministic, spatially distributed model being composed of conceptual, process-based approaches. Water availability (river discharge, storage volumes in reservoirs, soil moisture) is determined with daily resolution. Sub-basins, grid cells or administrative units (municipalities) can be chosen as spatial target units. The administrative units enable the coupling of Wasa in the framework of an integrated model which contains modules that do not work on the basis of natural spatial units. The target units mentioned above are disaggregated in Wasa into smaller modelling units within a new multi-scale, hierarchical approach. The landscape units defined in this scheme capture in particular the effect of structured variability of terrain, soil and vegetation characteristics along toposequences on soil moisture and runoff generation. Lateral hydrological processes at the hillslope scale, as reinfiltration of surface runoff, being of particular importance in semi-arid environments, can thus be represented also within the large-scale model in a simplified form. Depending on the resolution of available data, small-scale variability is not represented explicitly with geographic reference in Wasa, but by the distribution of sub-scale units and by statistical transition frequencies for lateral fluxes between these units. Further model components of Wasa which respect specific features of semi-arid hydrology are: (1) A two-layer model for evapotranspiration comprises energy transfer at the soil surface (including soil evaporation), which is of importance in view of the mainly sparse vegetation cover. Additionally, vegetation parameters are differentiated in space and time in dependence on the occurrence of the rainy season. (2) The infiltration module represents in particular infiltration-excess surface runoff as the dominant runoff component. (3) For the aggregate description of the water balance of reservoirs that cannot be represented explicitly in the model, a storage approach respecting different reservoirs size classes and their interaction via the river network is applied. (4) A model for the quantification of water withdrawal by water use in different sectors is coupled to Wasa. (5) A cascade model for the temporal disaggregation of precipitation time series, adapted to the specific characteristics of tropical convective rainfall, is applied for the generating rainfall time series of higher temporal resolution. All model parameters of Wasa can be derived from physiographic information of the study area. Thus, model calibration is primarily not required. Model applications of Wasa for historical time series generally results in a good model performance when comparing the simulation results of river discharge and reservoir storage volumes with observed data for river basins of various sizes. The mean water balance as well as the high interannual and intra-annual variability is reasonably represented by the model. Limitations of the modelling concept are most markedly seen for sub-basins with a runoff component from deep groundwater bodies of which the dynamics cannot be satisfactorily represented without calibration. Further results of model applications are: (1) Lateral processes of redistribution of runoff and soil moisture at the hillslope scale, in particular reinfiltration of surface runoff, lead to markedly smaller discharge volumes at the basin scale than the simple sum of runoff of the individual sub-areas. Thus, these processes are to be captured also in large-scale models. The different relevance of these processes for different conditions is demonstrated by a larger percentage decrease of discharge volumes in dry as compared to wet years. (2) Precipitation characteristics have a major impact on the hydrological response of semi-arid environments. In particular, underestimated rainfall intensities in the rainfall input due to the rough temporal resolution of the model and due to interpolation effects and, consequently, underestimated runoff volumes have to be compensated in the model. A scaling factor in the infiltration module or the use of disaggregated hourly rainfall data show good results in this respect. The simulation results of Wasa are characterized by large uncertainties. These are, on the one hand, due to uncertainties of the model structure to adequately represent the relevant hydrological processes. On the other hand, they are due to uncertainties of input data and parameters particularly in view of the low data availability. Of major importance is: (1) The uncertainty of rainfall data with regard to their spatial and temporal pattern has, due to the strong non-linear hydrological response, a large impact on the simulation results. (2) The uncertainty of soil parameters is in general of larger importance on model uncertainty than uncertainty of vegetation or topographic parameters. (3) The effect of uncertainty of individual model components or parameters is usually different for years with rainfall volumes being above or below the average, because individual hydrological processes are of different relevance in both cases. Thus, the uncertainty of individual model components or parameters is of different importance for the uncertainty of scenario simulations with increasing or decreasing precipitation trends. (4) The most important factor of uncertainty for scenarios of water availability in the study area is the uncertainty in the results of global climate models on which the regional climate scenarios are based. Both a marked increase or a decrease in precipitation can be assumed for the given data. Results of model simulations for climate scenarios until the year 2050 show that a possible future change in precipitation volumes causes a larger percentage change in runoff volumes by a factor of two to three. In the case of a decreasing precipitation trend, the efficiency of new reservoirs for securing water availability tends to decrease in the study area because of the interaction of the large number of reservoirs in retaining the overall decreasing runoff volumes.