Assessing Climate impacts on the Quantity and quality of WAter

- Hydrological and geomorphic effects of land use and climate changes.
- Assessment and spatio-temporal forecasting of geomorphic and hydrological hazards.
- Environmental change during the late Quaternary, as a tool to interpret the consequences of rapid climate changes.

The main tasks attributed to the group for the AQWA project are:
- To analyse the effect of land cover and climate variability on the hydrology of the Pyrenees
- To downscale climatic and land cover scenarios for the Pyrenees.
- To model the hydrological response of the Upper Aragon river basin in order to assess the effect of environmental change on water availability and water management of the region.

The previous experience relevant to the tasks referred above are related with several milestones reached by the group during the last 10 years, such as: Recent changes in the relationships between precipitation and discharge; trends in the intensity of rainstorms and floods; trends in snow accumulation and its effects on river regimen; effects of reservoirs on floods and river regimens; factors explaining soil erosion and runoff generation processes in different environments; fluvial adjustments in relation to Global Change. The group has published almost 200 papers in SCI journals during the last 10 years.

The Department of Geo-Environmental Processes and Global Change has participated in European research projects since 1996, especially devoted to (i) the validation of hydrological models, (ii) the sustainability of water resources in relation to sediment transport, and (iii) shallow landslide hazards in relation to land use and climate changes.

José M. García-Ruiz is Research Professor of the CSIC, PhD in Geography from the University of Zaragoza. His research activity has been devoted to study the effects of human activities on soil erosion and runoff generation, in both experimental, small catchments, and large basins. He has been the main responsible for a number or research projects funded by the Spanish Government. During the last 10 years he has published about 40 papers in the most important journals of hydrology and geomorphology.

Juan I. López-Moreno is postdoctoral fellow, PhD in Geography from the University of Zaragoza. His field of interest (with more than 20 papers in SCI journals during the last 6 years) is related to water management, hydrological effects of reservoirs, trends in discharge and precipitation, snow accumulation and snowmelt modelling.

Carlos Martí-Bono is Tenure Scientist of the CSIC, PhD in Geology from the University of Barcelona. He works on Late Quaternary rapid climate changes and hydrology. He published about 15 papers in SCI journals during the last 10 years.

Santiago Beguería is Tenure scientist of the CSIC. PhD in Geography from the University of Zaragoza. He has published in the main international journals of hydrology. His main works are related to rainfall-runoff relationships, extreme events, landslides, erosion and sediment sources. He is an expert in GIS modelling and remote sensing.

Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano is Tenure scientist of the CSIC, PhD in geography from the University of Zaragoza. He works in different environmental topics related to Global Change, particularly extreme events (droughts and floods), changes in land cover and the atmospheric circulation-climate relationships. He is an expert on hydrology, climatology, GIS and remote sensing.