VALENCIA, June 15 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Institute for Innovation and Knowledge Management (INGENIO), a joint center of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), participates in a European project to promote the use of images satellite, remote sensing and advanced computer tools to identify and categorize temporary rivers.
These are watercourses that can dry up during some period of the year and are ubiquitous in the European Union and throughout the world. They range from alpine streams fed by snow to those that occasionally fill with water in arid and semi-arid areas, as reported by the institute in a statement.
This project, called RIVERTEMP, also seeks to generate new educational content on these river courses. The project, coordinated by the Polytechnic University of Turin and financed by the Erasmus program of the European Commission, will conclude in 2025.
INGENIO researcher Guillermo Palau has pointed out that “on a global scale, recent hydrological estimates suggest that water stops flowing for more than 50% of the world’s river network, which shows that these rivers are the norm and not the exception in the Land”.
“They are becoming more frequent due to the combined effect of climate change and the increase in demand for water,” added the researcher. Likewise, he has pointed out that “in addition, the probability of seasonal or multi-annual droughts is increasing, which increases the probability of intermittent flows in a large part of the European territory, both in natural and regulated rivers”.
Palau has highlighted that these rivers, “often exploited to meet the growing demand for water, are currently being degraded at an alarming rate”, while considering that “water managers, professionals and the academic community have not developed enough methods to manage these types of intermittent ecosystems, which continually move between aquatic and terrestrial”.
“Management frameworks, at national and European scale, have yet to be developed or adapted to temporary rivers. A social paradigm shift towards new perceptions of rivers that includes flow intermittency is urgently needed, because this aspect will mostly represent our network in the near future”, explained the researcher from the Polytechnic University of Turin Paolo Vezza.
This expert added that this “makes a project like RIVERTEMP necessary, which combines the training and technological approach with a final objective: to help describe and better understand the effects of the climate situation we are experiencing, its impact on the availability of water and biodiversity from the rivers”.
The project is designing and developing new educational activities and training materials at the university level focused on temporary rivers, to improve the management of water resources.
Likewise, it focuses on the development of new free access and easy-to-use computer tools based on the analysis of satellite images for the identification and categorization of rivers.
This initiative will create a freely accessible GIS (Geographic Information System) repository to share the mapping of temporary rivers and quantify the dynamics of flow intermittency in river networks.
“All of this will contribute to a better knowledge of the temporary hydrographic network and will generate management tools to face the current climate crisis,” assured Guillermo Palau, who stressed that “continue working to raise awareness among the general population about the uses of water, reducing the pressure of the flows of these river courses and trying to maintain an ecological flow both in Spain and in European rivers”.