Effects of land uses and climate variability on the water quality of Mediterranean rivers: towards a regional vision of global change
- Autores: Rosana Aguilera Becker
- Directores de la Tesis: Rafael Marcé (dir. tes.), Sergi Sabater i Cortés (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat de Girona ( España ) en 2015
- Idioma: inglés
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Emili García-Berthou (presid.), José Barquín Ortiz (secret.), David Livingstone (voc.)
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
This work investigated the effect of global change phenomena, particularly land use and climatic changes, on water quality patterns in Mediterranean rivers. A hybrid process-based and statistical model (SPARROW) was applied to a largely disturbed Mediterranean basin (NE Spain) to estimate annual nitrate 2/2 and phosphate loads. The model emphasized the contribution of in-stream processes in nutrient retention and the inter-annual effects of hydrological variability on nutrient export. Dynamic Factor Analysis (DFA) was used to detect common patterns at the basin scale. The application of complementary methods allowed the detection of signatures of environmental change on water quality patterns in three Mediterranean basins. The spatio-temporal variability of nitrate concentration made a clear distinction among sites that had a relationship with hydrology and sites where other processes (e.g. phenology-related) prevailed. Conversely, the variability of phosphate concentration was more complex and some sites were underrepresented by the extracted common patterns.
