Effects of Climate Change and Anthropic Water Uses on Ecosystem Services Provided by an Alpine River

Several Alpine river ecosystem services depend on the streamflow regime, thus they might be affected by multiple stressors such as changing climate and anthropic water uses, with still poorly investigated consequences. We focused on the supply of three ecosystem services in an Alpine river, namely habitat provision, recreational activities, and hydroelectricity production from run-of-the-river power plants. We applied an integrated hydrological, hydraulic and habitat modeling approach to quantify the effects of climate change on these services, based on the outcomes of four regional climate models. The paper investigated the effects of water use policies such as the introduction of prescriptions for environmental flow under the same climate change models. We observed that climate change significantly affects the river suitability for the supply of ecosystem services at the catchment scale, while the introduction of environmental flow releases are relevant at a more local scales (several reaches). Under future scenarios, simulated increasing abstractions for hydroelectricity production from run-of-the-river power plants have a stronger effect on white-water rafting and a relatively smaller effect on fish habitat. Quantifying the potential effects of climate change and of different strategies of river flow management under these scenarios is a promising approach to support the design of long-term water resources management strategies at catchment and local level.