WAHASTRAT PROJECT

Water shortage hazard and adaptive water management strategies in the Hungarian-Serbian cross-border region

Wahastrat is a project funded within an Interreg-IPA Cross-border Programme Hungary-Serbia. Hydro-climatic hazards cannot be treated from the viewpoint of only damage prevention. The aspects of other fields have to also be taken into consideration (e.g. sustaining wetlands, water retention and agricultural production safety).

The project aims to find answers to interrelated questions with synchronized data and methods on both sides of the border by fundamental and applied research during the 18 month period. Firstly, water budget and water supply demand will be encountered to reveal the existing discrepancies between the resources and the usage of surface and subsurface water.

The main tasks are the calculation of water intake to determine the water deficiency and the available water resource; the analysis of the hydrological regime of the main water flows, since the variability of the low and high water periods effects the water budget of the adjacent areas with sensitive hydrology and ecology.

Analysis of the past climate extremities will lead to a better assessment of the critical climate conditions. By regional climate models, a detailed projection of hydro-climatic hazards will be estimated. The future tendencies of the climate change will be estimated by using REMO and ALADIN regional climate models to create a detailed projection of drought hazard. Via the evaluation of biomass activity, the condition of catchments will be evaluated. Temporal analysis of biomass production reveals the sensitivity and vulnerability of different land cover types. Spectral indices and spatial modelling are also involved in the evaluation.