Mediterranean Sea Use Cases
In the Mediterranean region, the focus is on tackling challenges such as pollution, habitat degradation by anthropogenic pressures, and climate change impacts. Mediterranean use cases include inland and marine areas of the Llobregat delta and Tordera catchment in Spain, and the Maltese islands.
These three use case sites are the focal points for developing comprehensive models and strategies to address the region's water quality, quantity, and ecologic issues. Together, these use case’s will build a high-resolution marine circulation model that includes biogeochemical parameter estimation and considers land and river inputs from hydrologic models calibrated by in-situ data. This approach aims to provide a holistic understanding of the entire water cycle, incorporating climate and socioeconomic variables.
Tordera catchment and Llobregat Delta
In the Tordera catchment and Llobregat Delta, efforts are underway to develop an integrated inland surface water model linked to the marine physical and biogeochemical models. Efforts are being made to refine coastal and inland-marine modelling approaches and support scenario analysis for inland water quantity and coastal impacts. The modelling approach is common for the marine part, while it is focused on the corresponding river basins for the inland part (Tordera, north of Barcelona and Llobregat Delta).
The specific research questions addressed here are:
What are the expected impacts on water resource availability in the river basin based on climate projections and land use / land cover future scenarios?
What are the changes in river flow discharge in the deltas? How do extreme events (drought and floods) affect the coastal environment and risks to human populations?
In the common marine part of Llobregat and Tordera use case, researchers are working to address the interplay between freshwater and marine biochemical dynamics.
For the marine part of the integrated use case, the research questions are:
How well do the models predict the input of pollutants and nutrients from inland to coastal waters?
Can the coupled inland-marine model better describe harmful algal blooms on beaches potentially affecting seafood safety?
Does the inland and coastal water pollution increase with drought, and how?
Malta
In the Maltese use case, researchers are developing an integrated groundwater and coastal model. The aim is to determine the marine ecological state by the land groundwater interactions.
In the Malta use case, the research questions addressed are:
Can the coupled inland-marine model contribute to the understanding of the water quantity discharge of nutrients and solutes from land to the sea through groundwater?
What are the changes in river flow discharge in the deltas? How do extreme events (drought and floods) affect the coastal environment and risks to human populations?
What are the expected impacts on groundwater resources based on long-term climate projections? Specifically, what will be the impact of sea level rise on the extent of the freshwater lens?
Data for the groundwater model developed as part of the Maltese case study is currently stored on a GitHub repository. The code to run the model and its installation instructions have been shared with WP4 to be tested on the Galaxy platform.
Other Regions
Click on a region to learn more about the use cases:
Baltic Sea
In the Baltic Sea region, the use cases aim to demonstrate the use of the Architecture Implementation Plan and Virtual Research Environment to assess the state of eutrophication in the Baltic marine environment, the level of land-based nutrient load and its environmental effects and costs of measures to reduce the load and mitigate eutrophication. Datasets will include data obtained through monitoring marine environment and rivers, satellite observations, modelling and observation of effects of undertaken environmental measures, their social and economic effects and many others. In total, three use cases are being implemented in the Baltic Sea region. These use cases include the Daugava River catchment and the Gulf of Riga, the Vantaanjoki River basin and the Gulf of Finland and environmental management data in Finland and Latvia.
