Assessment of runoff,water and sediment quality in the Selenga River basin aided by a web-based geoservice     

Daniel Karthe  Sergey Chalov  Vsevolod Moreido  Margarita Pashkina  Anna Romanchenko  Gunsmaa Batbayar  Andrei Kalugin  Katja Westphal  Marcus Malsy  Martina Flörke 《Water Resources》2017,44(3):399-416

The Selenga River is the main artery feeding Lake Baikal. It has a catchment of ~450000 km² in the boundary region between Northern Mongolia and Southern Siberia. Climate, land use and dynamic socioeconomic changes go along with rising water abstractions and contaminant loads originating from mining sites and urban wastewater. In the future, these pressures might have negative impacts on the ecosystems of Lake Baikal and the Selenga River Delta, which is an important wetland region in itself and forms the last geobiochemical barrier before the Selenga drains into Lake Baikal. The following study aims to assess current trends in hydrology and water quality in the Selenga-Baikal basin, identify their drivers and to set up models (WaterGAP3 framework and ECOMAG) for the prediction of future changes. Of particular relevance for hydrological and water quality changes in the recent past were climate and land use trends as well as contaminant influx from mining areas and urban settlements. In the near future, additional hydrological modifications due to the construction of dams and abstractions/water diversions from the Selenga’s Mongolian tributaries could lead to additional alterations.  相似文献