Health comparative comprehensive assessment of watersheds with different climates

摘要

Watershed health assessment are intended to provide a better understanding and awareness that natural resources are truly living bodies and processes performing essential ecosystem services. Towards this, watershed health was assessed using the standardized precipitation index (SPI), flow discharge, suspended sediment concentration (SSC), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP). The model was constructed based on the reliability (Rel), resilience (Res) and vulnerability (Vul) framework (RelResVul) for three watersheds viz. Foyle (United Kingdom), Xarrama (Portugal) and Shazand (Iran) with different climatic and hydrologic conditions. According to the framework, the scores of three individual indices i.e., Rel, Resand Vuland a watershed health assessment index were calculated using the geometric mean of three mentioned indices using data from 2001 to 2012. The comprehensive health index without considering TN and TP suggested that the watersheds scored medium (0.54 for Foyle and 0.53 for Xarrama), and low (0.37 for Shazand) health levels, respectively. The comprehensive health index also for both the Foyle (0.47) and Xarrama (0.49) watersheds was categorized in medium level considering TN and TP.