Risk Analysis Related to Impact of Climate Change on Water Resources and Hydropower Production in the Lusatian Neisse River Basin

Abstract

Water resources are one of the most important issues affected by climate change. Climate scenarios show that in the upcoming decades, further climate change can occur. It concerns especially air temperature and sunshine duration, whose prognosis indicates a significant rising trend till the end of the century. The goal of the paper was the evaluation of water resources and hydropower production in the future, depending on climate scenarios with a consideration of risk analysis. The analysis was carried out on the basis of observation data for the Lusatian Neisse river basin (Poland) for 1971–2015 and climate projections till 2100 for the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 (representative concentration pathways) scenarios. The results of the research showed that, especially in terms of RCP8.5, very high risk of decrease in water resources and hydropower production is expected in the future. Therefore, recommendations for mitigation of the possible effects are presented.

Assessment of probable groundwater changes under representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios through the wavelet–GEP model

“…The differences in groundwater level for representative wells in three climate change scenarios show that the prediction of a higher declination of groundwater level under climate change scenarios would be uncertain, and this uncertainty could be a result of the inherent structure and complexity of groundwater resources. These findings match well with similar studies in the field of groundwater level and climate change (Salem et al, 2018;Jeihouni et al, 2019a;Razack et al, 2019;Adynkiewicz-Piragas & Miszuk, 2020;Idrizovic et al, 2020;Ghazi et al, 2021).…”

Socio-Environmental Vulnerability Assessment for Sustainable Management

“…How will demographic change, particularly in an aging society, affect social and environmental resilience [33]? How should we supply ourselves with energy [34][35][36]? How should we shape our transport systems [37]?…”

Environmental Flow Scenarios for a Regulated River System: Projecting Catchment‐Wide Ecosystem Benefits and Consequences for Hydroelectric Production

“…Such knowledge will facilitate managing current and future threats impacting freshwater ecosystems (Reid et al., 2019). Since extreme weather events are expected to increase in frequency as a result of climate change, such effects are essential to consider (Adynkiewicz‐Piragas & Bartlomiej, 2020). How can enough flexibility be built into environmental flow rules to be prepared for future extreme events and which magnitude of deviation should be taken into account?…”