Integrated river management and ecology: sustainable development of the River Kamp landscape
The Austrian case study “Integrated river management and ecology: sustainable development of the River Kamp landscape” focuses on the integration of the basic socio-economical and ecological factors that have to be considered to achieve a sustainable development of riverine landscapes. The representation of key processes driving the sustainable development of riverine landscapes in QR with GARP will help to organize the information in a comprehensible way and will be used to communicate potential development scenarios. The models will be developed within a collaborative QR-workbench (collaborative modelling and learning environment) in close collaboration with a case study from England. Both case studies take into account activities and needs at a catchment level, as the main focus of the EU-Water-Framework-Directive (WFD, a new European water legislation launched in the year 2000) is the management of river basins, the natural geographic and hydrologic unit. As one of the key objectives of the WFD is to achieve the “good ecological status” of running waters by 2015, the case study uses the ecological status of the river as an indicator for sustainability on a catchment level.
The River Kamp lies in the North-Eastern part of Austria. It has a length of 160 km and a catchment area of 1753 km2; the mean slope of the river in the project area is between 1‰ and 3.4‰. The discharge regime and the temperature regime of the river are heavily modified by large impoundments in the upstream part of the project area.