Exploring causes of hydrological alterations in the Medjerda River basin, Algeria

Kadir, Mokrane;Vanclooster, Marnik;Delforge, Damien
(2019) Louvain4Water: The Language of Water — Location: Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium (18.March.2019)

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The Mediterranean area is considered to be a hotspot for climate change. This will have a considerable impact on hydrologic and ecosystem services of Mediterranean catchments. Due to complicated interconnections in the hydro-meteorological system, quantifying the influence of individual factors on streamflow alteration remains challenging. In this study, we explore the causes of hydrological alteration within the Tunisian-Algerian transboundary basin of the Medjerda and we extract factors that dominate streamflow alteration. This basin covers 23 700 km2 of which 7 870 km2 are in Algeria, or 32% of the total area. Reference hydrometrological data in the basin are collected and provided by the local authorities. The data base is enriched with generic time series on evapotranspiration, temperature and NDVI, inferred from the Google Earth Engine cloud-based platform. Nonlinear time series analysis tools (convergent cross mapping, CCM) are implemented to quantify the causality of individual factors on streamflow. The results proved that the CCM method is able to detect quantitative influences of individual factors on streamflow, and to discriminate the role of climate factors (rainfall, evapotranspiration, temperature) from other environmental factors (e.g. land use related NDVI) on hydrological alterations. Understanding the individual role of factors on hydrological alteration is essential for designing appropriate water management adaptation programs in this water stressed basin.
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Kadir, M., Vanclooster, M., & Delforge, D. (2019). Exploring causes of hydrological alterations in the Medjerda River basin, Algeria. Louvain4Water: The Language of Water, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/30604