1173 | 664 | HYMOS – a new methodology for hydromorphological monitoring and assessment of watercourses in the Czech Republic | Ján BABEJ, Jiří JAKUBÍNSKÝ, Vilém PECHANEC, Kateřina KRÁSNÁ, Lenka ŠTĚRBOVÁ, Renata VČELÁKOVÁ, Denisa NĚMEJCOVÁ, Pavel KOŽENÝ, Michal STRAKA
The Water Framework Directive requires Member States to assess the hydromorphological quality elements of water bodies as part of the ecological status assessment. Although there was a method for assessing the hydromorphology of watercourses in the Czech Republic since the first planning cycle (HEM 2007, HEM 2014), the use of this method in practice has been limited by its complexity and the large volume of fieldwork. The progress in remote sensing and the increasing availability of spatial data provide the opportunity to integrate these data into the process of hydromorphological assessment. The main objective of the HYMOS project is to develop a much less time-consuming and costly methodological approach (together with the software solution) with high reproducibility, based on a combination of remote sensing and field survey data, which meets the requirements of the European Commission. The new methodology is based on the methods actively used in European countries. The reference state is given by undisturbed conditions, showing no or minor human influence, as defined in the European standard EN 14614:2020. Some morphological indicators require good knowledge of fluvial geomorphology, when reference conditions are set in this way. Therefore, the morphological typology for Czech rivers was developed based on four parameters (sediment contribution potential, valley slope, confinement index and Strahler stream order) and each type was described by abiotic parameters in order to define type-specific conditions (in the reference state) and to reduce requirements on the level of geomorphological interpretation. On the other hand, the typology cannot capture some specific types. Therefore, the use of the typology in the assessment process is not mandatory. This allows the assessment of rare river types without losing information about the specific river channel morphology.
Ján BABEJ, Jiří JAKUBÍNSKÝ, Vilém PECHANEC, Kateřina KRÁSNÁ, Lenka ŠTĚRBOVÁ, Renata VČELÁKOVÁ, Denisa NĚMEJCOVÁ, Pavel KOŽENÝ, Michal STRAKA
The Czech Academy of Sciences, Global Change Research Institute; T.G. Masaryk Water Research Institute; Dept. of Development and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science, Palacký University Olomouc
ID Abstract: 664