Assessment of freshwater ecosystem services in  the Beas River Basin, Himalayas region, India

Ncube, Sikhululekile; Beevers, Lindsay; Adeloye, Adebayo J.; Visser-Quinn, Annie

doi:10.5194/piahs-379-67-2018

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Our focus area is the Beas river basin in Himachal Pradesh state, India, where the Beas rises in the western Himalayas before eventually flowing westerly into the Pong reservoir, dammed at its western end by the Pong Dam [54][55][56]. The Pong reservoir stretches to a surface area of 260 km 2 with a catchment of 12,561 km 2 [55], managed by the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB), which regulates discharge from the Pong Dam for generating hydroelectric power and providing irrigation to 1.6 Mha of land.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Associating Climatic Trends with Stochastic Modelling of Flow Sequences

et al. 2021

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Water is essential to all lifeforms including various ecological, geological, hydrological, and climatic processes/activities. With the changing climate, associated El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events appear to stimulate highly uncertain patterns of precipitation (P) and evapotranspiration (E) processes across the globe. Changes in P and EV patterns are highly sensitive to temperature (T) variation and thus also affect natural streamflow processes. This paper presents a novel suite of stochastic modelling approaches for associating streamflow sequences with climatic trends. The present work is built upon a stochastic modelling framework (HMM_GP) that integrates a hidden Markov model (HMM) with a generalised Pareto (GP) distribution for simulating synthetic flow sequences. The GP distribution within the HMM_GP model aims to improve the model’s efficiency in effectively simulating extreme events. This paper further investigated the potential of generalised extreme value distribution (GEV) coupled with an HMM model within a regression-based scheme for associating the impacts of precipitation and evapotranspiration processes on streamflow. The statistical characteristic of the pioneering modelling schematic was thoroughly assessed for its suitability to generate and predict synthetic river flow sequences for a set of future climatic projections, specifically during ENSO events. The new modelling schematic can be adapted for a range of applications in hydrology, agriculture, and climate change.

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Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Associating Climatic Trends with Stochastic Modelling of Flow Sequences

et al. 2021

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“…The impact of pressures, such as climate change, on the functionality of freshwater ecosystems has been limitedly explored, for example [52,53]. Here, we create a matrix of functional flow preferences and feeding groups (defined in Table A2) using species level macroinvertebrate data collected by the EA at eight sites on the River Nar ( Figure 2) from 1993 to 2014 (spring season, April-May-June; 8 * 22 * 1 = 176 samples) [54].…”

Section: River Health and Ecosystem Functionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Climate Change on Hydroecological Response in Chalk Streams

Visser-Quinn

Beevers

Patidar

2019

Water

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Climate change represents a major threat to lotic freshwater ecosystems and their ability to support the provision of ecosystem services. England’s chalk streams are in a poor state of health, with significant concerns regarding their resilience, the ability to adapt, under a changing climate. This paper aims to quantify the effect of climate change on hydroecological response for the River Nar, south-east England. To this end, we apply a coupled hydrological and hydroecological modelling framework, with the UK probabilistic climate projections 2009 (UKCP09) weather generator serving as input (CMIP3 A1B high emissions scenario, 2021 to the end-of-century). The results indicate a minimal change in the long-term mean hydroecological response over this period. In terms of interannual variability, the median hydroecological response is subject to increased uncertainty, whilst lower probability extremes are virtually certain to become more homogeneous (assuming a high emissions scenario). A functional matrix, relating species-level macroinvertebrate functional flow preferences to functional food groups reveals that, on the baseline, under extreme conditions, key groups are underrepresented. To date, despite this limited range, the River Nar has been able to adapt to extreme events due to interannual variation. In the future, this variation is greatly reduced, raising real concerns over the resilience of the river ecosystem, and chalk ecosystems more generally, under climate change.

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“…To further validate the hydroecological model output, hydrological indices are calculated for the Nadaun gauge for the period 2014-2017. The simulated LIFE scores are considered relative to the 2017 sampling (at Nadaun and Sajunpur; undertaken as part of this study; [54]) in Figure 7. The simulated LIFE score lies between the two observed values.…”

Section: Hydroecological Relationshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Framework for Assessing Instream Supporting Ecosystem Services Based on Hydroecological Modelling

Ncube

Visser-Quinn

Beevers

2018

Water

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River systems provide diverse ecosystem services (ES), such as flood regulation (regulating), fresh water (provisioning), nutrient cycling (supporting), and recreation (cultural), among others. The construction of infrastructure (e.g., for hydropower, irrigation) enhances the delivery of tangible ES for example food or energy (generally provisioning) to meet human needs. However, the resulting change to river flows threatens both the ecological health of a river and its ability to provide intangible but vital ES, for example those which support the delivery of other services. Understanding these supporting ES processes in river systems is essential to fully recognise the impact of water resources development on ES delivery. Whilst approaches for assessing instream supporting ES are under development, to date few provide quantitative methods for assessing delivery. Thus, this paper sets out a framework for the assessment of instream supporting ES using hydroecological modelling. It links supporting ES delivery to fluvial hydrological indicators through the use of ecologically relevant hydrological indices and macroinvertebrate flow preferences. The proposed framework is demonstrated on the Beas River basin (Western Himalayas, India), and is flexible enough to be transferred to a basin-wide model, thereby allowing ES relationships to be accounted for in basin-wide water resources planning.

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Assessment of freshwater ecosystem services in the Beas River Basin, Himalayas region, India

Cited by 6 publications

References 13 publications

Associating Climatic Trends with Stochastic Modelling of Flow Sequences

Associating Climatic Trends with Stochastic Modelling of Flow Sequences

The Impact of Climate Change on Hydroecological Response in Chalk Streams

A Framework for Assessing Instream Supporting Ecosystem Services Based on Hydroecological Modelling

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