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Tuesday, december 1 2009

Low flows – Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech

The INTERREG IV B - AMICE project, interested in the impacts of climate evolutions on floods as well as on low flows, is really the occasion for the Walloon region to carry out the low flow frequency analysis on its territory.  The objective is to establish a methodology based on techniques used in the neighbouring countries and on recent studies described in literature.

There exist many definitions of the low flow but in the framework of the AMICE project the Walloon region retained two of them:

•    Mean Annual 7-day Minimum flow (MAM7): the lowest value of the moving average of the flows reached during 7 consecutive days a year.
•    Q95: flow reached or exceeded 95% of the year.

The source data used are the daily medium flows.  Work is carried out per calendar year, taking into account the fact that the period of low flows in Belgium extends from June to October.

An inventory of these hydrological observation stations having sufficient historical records available was carried out.  Quality as well as homogeneity of the data are being checked.  Statistical work will start soon.

Thanks to the AMICE project, the Walloon region will have a better knowledge of low flows of its rivers; this topic used to be a bit neglected because it is not yet problematic in this area.  With the climate evolutions predicted for the end of this century however - increase in the periods of droughts - it is time to improve our knowledge in this field as to manage our rivers as well as possible.

The Partners involved in this news :

  • Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech
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