Monitoring Water Use Regimes and Density in a Tourist Mountain Territory

Abstract

Lack of water use data at the user scale is frequently noted in integrated water management and water demand modelling studies. This situation affects particularly mountain tourist areas, where high seasonal water demand related to the variation of temporary population are rarely documented. Irrigation is also a major water use in moutain territories but is not commonly measured. This paper proposes a framework for local-scale monitoring of seasonal water use behaviours and their territorial inprint. A monitoring strategy was developed to collect water demand data at thin spatio-temporal scales which were analysed using two concepts: (i) the water use regime, describing the dynamics of water uses throughout the year using normalised values, and (ii) the water use density, expressing the territorial footprint of a water use, in terms of unit area. This strategy was applied in the alpine tourist municipality of Montana (Switzerland). A two-year monitoring campaign of irrigation and drinking water uses was carried out combining in-field measurement (water meters) with interviews of water users. The temporal resolution of the collected water use dataset (bi-weekly, daily) was sufficient to assess the specific water demand patterns and the short-term water use peaks responsible for water stress in Alpine tourist regions. It provided the first irrigation monitoring in the area and a classification of drinking water data according to their spatial distribution, the type of building and the permanency of residents. The water use density method gives a new prespective on the spatial intensity of water uses, highlighting the importance of garden irrigation in Montana. Also, the water use regime method identified July as the period of water demand peaking. The monitoring of water uses at such thin temporal scale constitutes the necessary dataset for the creation of water balance models that accurately reproduce the effective water use behaviours.

The Analogues Method: Reproducing the Seasonality of Drinking Water Distribution in Mountain Tourist Resorts

“…It complements Marnezy's model (2008) because it presents two types of temporal variability: low frequency (seasonal variability) and high frequency (weekly variability). Then, the intra-annual variations in water supplies were described for the sample of water meters by defining a typology of seasonal patterns, according to the concept of use regime (Calianno et al, 2018). The daily measurement of contributions at the user scale completes the modelling of water distribution management in Megève carried out by Leroy (2015).…”

“…The drinking water supply time series have been normalized (Fig. 2c) to produce regimes that focus on the dynamics of use (Calianno et al, 2018). For daily series, the regime coefficient (RCi) is the normalized value obtained by dividing the daily average of the intakes by the interannual average (Eq.…”

“…These stations have a high proportion of secondary accommodation and tourist accommodation, which leads to strong seasonal variations: demand can double in a few weeks, even days, (Nahrath and Bréthaut, 2016). In addition, demand depends on the types of users and their practices, which must be identified for specific territories (Calianno et al, 2018).…”

“…The problem of the lack of direct measurements is solved by monitoring water meters (drinking water supplies) on a sample of buildings and monitored daily. The problem of data availability is addressed by proposing the analogues method, a strategy which estimates the distribution of municipal drinking water based on the data from the monitoring and using the concept of delivery regimes to highlight the water use seasonality (Calianno et al, 2018). The particularity of this method is that it distinguishes the building parameters that can influence the use of water: allocation (e.g.…”

Tourisme de montagne et gestion de l’eau et de la neige en contexte de changement climatique

“…L'une des problématiques liées à la modélisation du rapport ressource-demandes à l'échelle des bassins versants régionaux et locaux et à la mise en évidence des possibles situations de stress hydrique(Milano et al, 2015) est relative au manque de données suffisamment précises sur les demandes en eau actuelles et sur leur évolution récente(Grouillet et al, 2015). Dans les régions touristiques, cette lacune est encore renforcée par la variabilité de l'occupation touristique et il est nécessaire de mieux appréhender cette variabilité(Reynard, 2001 ;Calianno et al, 2018 ; Tourisme de montagne et gestion de l'eau et de la neige en contexte de change... Journal of Alpine Research | Revue de géographie alpine, 108-1 | 2020…”