Health comparative comprehensive assessment of watersheds with different climates

Zeinab Hazbavi, Saskia D. Keesstra, João P. Nunes, Jantiene E.M. Baartman, Mehdi Gholamalifard, Seyed Hamidreza Sadeghi*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

41 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Watershed health assessment are intended to provide a better understanding and awareness that natural resources are truly living bodies and processes performing essential ecosystem services. Towards this, watershed health was assessed using the standardized precipitation index (SPI), flow discharge, suspended sediment concentration (SSC), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP). The model was constructed based on the reliability (Rel), resilience (Res) and vulnerability (Vul) framework (RelResVul) for three watersheds viz. Foyle (United Kingdom), Xarrama (Portugal) and Shazand (Iran) with different climatic and hydrologic conditions. According to the framework, the scores of three individual indices i.e., Rel, Res and Vul and a watershed health assessment index were calculated using the geometric mean of three mentioned indices using data from 2001 to 2012. The comprehensive health index without considering TN and TP suggested that the watersheds scored medium (0.54 for Foyle and 0.53 for Xarrama), and low (0.37 for Shazand) health levels, respectively. The comprehensive health index also for both the Foyle (0.47) and Xarrama (0.49) watersheds was categorized in medium level considering TN and TP.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)781-790
JournalEcological Indicators
Volume93
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2018

Keywords

  • Ecological health
  • Health monitoring
  • Healthy watershed
  • Watershed behavioral health
  • Watershed health indicators

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