Technical Note: Seasonality in alpine water resources management – a regional assessment

摘要

Alpine regions are particularly affected by seasonal variations in waterdemand and water availability. Especially the winter period is critical froman operational point of view, as being characterised by high water demandsdue to tourism and low water availability due to the temporal storage ofprecipitation as snow and ice. The clear definition of summer and winterperiods is thus an essential prerequisite for water resource management inalpine regions. This paper presents a GIS-based multi criteria method todetermine the winter season. A snow cover duration dataset serves as basisfor this analysis. Different water demand stakeholders, the alpine hydrologyand the present day water supply infrastructure are taken into account.Technical snow-making and (winter) tourism were identified as the two majorseasonal water demand stakeholders in the study area, which is theKitzbueheler region in the Austrian Alps. Based upon different geographicaldatasets winter was defined as the period from December to March, and summeras the period from April to November. By determining potential regionalwater balance deficits or surpluses in the present day situation and infuture, important management decisions such as water storage and allocationcan be made and transposed to the local level.