Integrative Techniques, Szenarios and Strategies regarding Global Change of the Water Cycle

The aims of GLOWA-Danube are the development and validation of the web-based Global Change Decision-Support-System DANUBIA as a platform for integration, the development of integrated modeling approaches based on unified modeling techniques and integrative monitoring using remote sensing. DANUBIA will be used as simulation tool to test future sustainable development alternatives for multinational mountainous watersheds and their forelands, such as the Upper Danube catchment, under Global Change conditions. After the proof of concept in the first project phase, DANUBIA was validated for the years 1995-99 and then applied for a first prototype scenario considering the IPCC trends for the next 100 years. Other activities of the past project year include the initialisation of a moderated stakeholder dialogue, production of a both online and printed Upper Danube Global Change Atlas as a tool for stakeholder negotiations as well as the development of model concepts for the simulation of vehicular traffic flows and wind-induced snow transport to support the project groups with prototypes for the concepts of the deep actor and lateral subproxel processes, respectively. 1. Overall aims of the project It is the goal of GLOWA-Danube to develop and validate integration techniques, integrated models as well as monitoring methods for the functional catchment type in the alpine foreland of the humid latitudes, and to implement them in the network-based decision support system DANUBIA. DANUBIA includes the essential natural and social science processes which are required for a realistic simulation of water fluxes in mountain-foreland regions. Therefore, it is considering lateral fluxes, upstream/downstram relations, meteorological gradients as well as specific use of sensitive boundary regions; furthermore, it is transferable, i.e. can be applied to the very different catchments of the GLOWA-transect (Mauser 2003). DANUBIA was built up as a prototype in the first project phase and its usabiltiy tested with validation runs which represent the actual state and can thus be compared with measured data. DANUBIA describes the concerned processes spatially distributed and is prepared to explicitely deal with lateral redistribution of water-, energy and matter fluxes as well as migration and cash flow. To implement the coupled model as a basis for DANUBIA new approaches were consequently used which are available from current developments in information technologies. They allow to build new bridges between the participating disciplines and discover new possibilities of integration between them. Further goal of GLOWA-Danube is to apply DANUBIA exemplarily for the thematical complexes of Global Change of the water cycle for the Upper Danube catchment, i.e. develop related future scenarios and investigate their sustainability. Such scenarios are commonly developed together with the relevant stakeholders within the framework of a moderated dialogue to collect all required experiences for the implementation. The complex scenarios which will Project ID: 01LW0303A (”Coordination”) Project duration: 01.03.2004 – 28.02.2007 Report period: 01.03.2004 – 28.02.2005