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Important hydrological changes are observed in Serbia, as well as in many parts of the world. Many national and international projects and studies address climate change and its impact on water resources. Some focus solely on the impact of climate change, while others also assess the impact of land use changes and/or changes in human use of water. Due to differences in climate change and human activities, the different climate and hydrological trends are obtained for the different regions in Serbia. This paper presents the past longterm temperature, precipitation and river discharge trends across Serbia. Second, more important aim of the research, is to assess and forecast average relationships between an increase in air temperature and changes in river discharges and precipitation. This relation could help us to find appropriate regional climate and hydrological models. Even within a single catchment, depending on the regional models used, the initial and other assumptions made, and the impacts assessed, the differences between the results can be small but often significant, too. The reliability of the projections receives little or no consideration. This paper also discusses this topic and attempts to provide some guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequent drought disasters have significant impacts on socio-economic and ecosystems, and it is crucial to explore the propagation characteristics of drought for disaster prevention and mitigation. In this paper, based on 0.25° × 0.25° grid-point Meteorological hydrological and large-scale climate factor data, the start-to-start, peak-to-peak, and end-to-end drought propagation times, and the periods and rates of drought development and recovery were estimated for 11 regions in the Luanhe River Basin under stationary and non-stationary conditions. The Generalized Additive Model for Location, Scale and Shape (GAMLSS) framework was used to construct stationary and non-stationary models to capture the stationary and non-stationary drought characteristics respectively, and then the drought development and recovery patterns, and drought propagation times were assessed. The results showed that under the influence of climate factors, severe drought events occurred in most study areas, the duration of meteorological drought was prolonged by 0.1–0.6 months, and the peak intensity was increased by about 0.05. The severity of hydrological drought increased by 0.2–0.8, and the peak intensity decreased by 0.1–0.2. The rate of development and recovery of hydrological drought was accelerated by 0.1–0.2 per month. The propagation time of start-to-start was shortened by 0.2 months, and the propagation time of end-to-end was extended by 1–2 months. These mean that water resource control authorities need to propose responses to droughts more quickly. • The non-stationary drought indices considering climatic factors were constructed. • The drought propagation time was calculated from start to start, peak to peak, and end to end. • Quantification of the effects of climate change on drought propagation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The impact of precipitation, slope, and swamp wetland ratio on water yield is not affected by spatial scale and watershed. • Identifying key areas for ecosystem services combined with multiple scenarios can help to take ecological restoration. • The water yield in the Baihe basin is more sensitive on climate change, while the water yield in the Heihe basin is more easily affected by land use changes. • The economic development and ecosystem services can both be ensured by wetland ecological restoration. Water supply is one of the core ecosystem services functions for wetland. Due to the important status of Zoige wetland, assessment of water supply in Zoige wetland is significant for ecological security all over the world. In this paper, Heihe and Baihe basins in Zoige wetland were taken as research objects, the water yield module of the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model was used to spatially quantify water supply, with the aims of revealing the driving mechanism of water supply under different basins and spatial scale. We observed the spatial pattern change of water yield under baseline and eleven future scenarios and used the ANOVA of repeated measures and multiple linear regression model to explore the patterns and driving factors of water supply in Heihe and Baihe rivers basins. The research results were as follow. (1) The precipitation is main factor to improve water yield, but this intensity is different in different basins and spatial scale. Topography, climate, vegetation, and percentage of wetland conditions have important impacts on water yield services. However, the impacts of these conditions on water yield were various significantly across different watersheds and spatial scales (excluding factors such as precipitation, slope, and percentage of swamp wetland). (2) The spatial pattern of water yield main was affected by land use change and the amount of water yield main was affected by future climate change. (3) Water yield in the Baihe basin was more sensitive to climate change, while the Heihe basin is more sensitive to land use changes. Wetland ecological restoration strategies can effectively improve regional water yield, especially in the Heihe basin. (4) In all scenarios, the southeast regions of the study region were both the main hot spots of water yield. Wetland ecological restoration strategies have added hot spots in the north regions of the Baihe river basin, reduced hot spots in the middle-south regions of the Heihe basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water is exposed to various types of stressors. There are environmental stressors or anthropogenic stressors, which have direct and/or indirect impacts on climate change. The overall objective of this paper is to develop a pioneer simple tool that can measure the water resources vulnerability due to environmental and anthropogenic factors. The tool is developed under six stages. Stage-1: A list of 28 indicators pertinent to the present work are generated; Stage-2: The indicators are assorted into two main categories, namely, environmental and anthropogenic indicators; Stage-3: Indicator weights are suggested using expert elicitation procedure; Stage-4: Index formulation is performed consecutively; Stage-5: The proposed index is applied; Stage-6: An appropriate adaptation strategy is proposed to each specific country. The developed tool is applied to the Limpopo River basin using 28 indicators. Results show that both the environmentally and anthropogenically driven vulnerability of the four riparian countries are moderate ranging from 41.98% in Mozambique to 47.69% in South Africa. The value of indicators ranges from 0.93% to 98.81% in environmentally driven vulnerability and ranges from 0.00% to 97.66% in anthropogenically driven vulnerability. Climate change is thought to increase the vulnerability of water resources by 9.47% in Mozambique to 13.56% in South Africa. The developed tool can be applied to other river basins and countries elsewhere considering indicator weight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mountains are important global reservoirs of water resources. However they are highly vulnerable to climate change as limited alterations in temperature and precipitation may cause harmful effects to water systems. Southern Europe and especially Greece are expected to undergo a drought trend over the next decades, resulting in less recharge for the aquifers and water services reduction. Thus, climate change may distort both natural and socioeconomic characteristics of freshwater ecosystem services deteriorating the general social welfare related to them. This paper examines the economic impacts of climate change on river uses of the Aoos basin in Greece. In this regard, a choice experiment is conducted to estimate the value changes in different ecological and economic services in a mountain community. The econometric simulations using conditional logit, random parameters logit and latent class models reveal that despite existing preference heterogeneity, respondents on average derive positive and significant welfare effects from climate change adaptation measures. The findings of the survey may assist in adaptation planning for the Aoos River basin, with possible extensions to other river systems enduring similar climate change indications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Disturbance of forested catchments by fire, logging, or other natural or human induced events that alter the evapotranspiration regime may be a substantial threat to domestic, environmental and industrial water supplies. This paper describes the physically-based modelling of the long term changes in water yield from two wildfire affected catchments in north-eastern Victoria, Australia, and of fire and climate change scenarios in Melbourne''s principal water supply catchment. The effect of scale, data availability and quality, and of forest species parameterisation are explored. The modelling demonstrates the importance of precipitation inputs, with Nash and Sutcliffe Coefficients of Efficiency of predicted versus observed monthly flows increasing from 0.5 to 0.8 with a higher density of rainfall stations, and where forest types are well parameterised. Total predicted flow volumes for the calibrations were within 1% of the observed for the Mitta Mitta River catchment and <4% for the Thomson River, but almost −10% for the less well parameterised Tambo River. Despite the issues of data availability simulations demonstrated the potential for significant impacts to water supply in SE Australia from wildfire and climate change. For example, for the catchments modelled the moderate climate change impact on water yield was more pronounced than the worst fire scenario. Both modelled cases resulted in long term water yield declines exceeding 20%, with the climate change impact nearing 30%. A simulation using observed data for the first four post-fire years at the Mitta Mitta River catchment showed Macaque was able to accurately predict total flow. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Among the alternative water sources, rainwater harvesting is the most popular and readily useable. However, studies related to the knowledge of future sustainability of this resource and its usage are limited. In this paper, projected future rainfall data for two distinct future set of periods (2020–39 and 2080–99) are used to calculate future water savings potentials using an earlier developed daily water balance model for five different regions in Sydney, the largest city in Australia. The rainfall data is collected from four different projection tools provided by the Australian government's climate data portal. With the assumptions of average household water demand as 400 L/day, a tank size of 5000 L and a roof catchment area of 200 m2, water savings and reliabilities of water availability are calculated for future scenarios for five different locations within a broader region of Sydney. Water savings and reliabilities are then compared with the same for current average rainfall condition based on historical data for the same locations. It is found that for most of the studied cases, both in the near (2020–39) and distant (2080–99) future, water savings as well as reliabilities are expected to be decreased compared to the current average scenario. However, in the distant future, both water savings and reliabilities are expected to be increased compared to the near future scenario. Also, it is predicted that spatial variability of water savings within the selected region will increase compared to the current scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The rainfall-runoff relationship has changed under climate change and human activities in the TRH region. • The impacts climate indicators of rainfall-runoff ratio in the sub-basins of TRH region were different. • The contribution rates of human activity in the YRB were a little higher than that in the YARB. Identifying the impact of climate change and human activities on rainfall-runoff relationship in the Three-River Headwaters (TRH) region is essential for water source conservation, ecological security, and biodiversity maintenance of China and East Asia. In this paper, the runoff-rainfall ratio was used as the index of rainfall-runoff relationship. Different methods were employed to identify the impact indicators and quantitative assessment of rainfall-runoff relationship from 1957 to 2016. The results are the following: (1) the rainfall-runoff relationship has changed in the source regions of Yangtze River basin (YARB) and Yellow River (YRB), and runoff-rainfall ratio has increased by 2.9% and decreased by 3.2%, respectively; (2) the main climate indicators of runoff-rainfall ratio were rainfall, potential evaporation and sunshine hours in the YARB, and rainfall, potential evaporation and temperature in the YRB; (3) the contribution rates of human activity in the YRB were a little higher than that in the YARB, and the contribution rates of climate change and human activity were 90.9% and 9.1% in the YARB and 42.9% and 57.1% in the YRB. The results can provide invaluable information for managing water resources and taking ecological protection measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]