Impact of land use changes on water dynamics-a case study in temperate meso and macroscale river basins

The paper illustrates impact studies of land use changes on the water balance in meso and macroscale river basins. Problems of impact studies in large river basins result mainly from a huge heterogeneity inside and the relative rough input database. Simple approaches are needed to setup possible land use changes on the basis of easily available spatial data. The investigations are carried out for the river basins of the Saale (24 000 km(2)) and the Havel (19 000 km(2)), two main tributaries of the Elbe River. The hydrological simulations were done with the modelling system ArcEGMO (Becker et al., in: Mathematical Models of Watershed Hydrology, Water Resources Publications, Littleton, CO, 2002). (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.