Applications of GIS-based hydrological models in mountain areas in Bulgaria for ecosystem services assessment

Issues and advantages

authored by: Kremena Boyanova, Stoyan Nedkov, Benjamin Burkhard
Abstract: The application of hydrological models for the assessment of ecosystem services provides multiple opportunities for their quantitative analysis. Furthermore, Geographic Information System (GIS)-based models provide the possibility for spatially explicit analyses of model outputs and their representation in maps. A broadly applied and freely available hydrological model is the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The tool for its application in ArcGIS is ArcSWAT. The application of the model in mountain areas in Bulgaria can provide better understanding of the supply of ecosystem services and especially the water-related services, considering the large landscape diversity and climate differences within mountain watersheds. Still, data characteristics and limitations in Bulgaria can be restrictive for the quality of the model outputs. ArcSWAT is created and actively supported by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Consequently, the soil and land cover typologies and their respective lookup tables that are built into the model database are based on freely available USA datasets. The climate database integrated in the model is from stations throughout the United States and does not cover other countries, which makes the application of the model outside the United States more complicated. For Bulgaria, the most detailed soil and land cover datasets use Bulgarian typologies, which have rarely been correlated to European or global types, and no correlation with US typologies have been found in the literature. Additionally, vegetation information within the different natural and semi-natural land cover classes is not freely available. The access to daily climate data is also limited, especially for solar radiation, relative humidity, and wind speed, which are harder to collect than temperature and precipitation. In this study we show how the application of the SWAT hydrological model in mountain watersheds in Bulgaria is possible, even with the existent data limitations. The test watershed used for that purpose is the Upper Ogosta watershed. The benefits of running the model for understanding of the hydrological cycle and the supply of ecosystem services within the area are discussed, as well as the issues and restrictions resulting from data limitations.
External Organisation(s): Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS)
Kiel University
Type: Contribution to book/anthology
Pages: 35-51
No. of pages: 17
Publication date: 01.01.2016
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: General Earth and Planetary Sciences, General Engineering, General Environmental Science, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 15 - Life on Land
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27905-3_3 (Access: Closed)