Zelivka River Basin, Czech Republic
Location
The River Želivka basin is situated in Central Bohemia and covers an area of ~1200 km2. Švihov reservoir (309 million of m3), located ~70km south-east of Prague is the most important reservoir within CZE and also biggest in CEE region. The reservoir supplies drinking water to the entire Prague agglomeration, and it is a strategic source of water for CZE. For this reason, water quality protection needs to be given special attention.
Description
Želivka River basin has an hilly landscape (315-765 m a.s.l.) with three major land use types: arable land: 51%, forests: 30% and green areas: 16%. Town Pelhřimov (~16 000 inh.) with several smaller towns are main inhabited areas within the basin. Želivka basin is formed by crystalline bedrock with only minor local groundwater bodies, covered mostly by cambisols. At present, 54% of the catchment area is used for agriculture, with majority as arable land.
Martinický creek catchment (113 km2) and its sub-catchments are subject of long-term research and observation, forming base of data for revealing rainfall-runoff processes and chemicals fate in system of vegetation-soil-subsurface-surface water. This is necessary for proposal of evidence-based and efficient measures, limiting activities in catchment area for preservation of drinking water quality also for future.
Several long-term projects were conducted on these catchments with aim to monitor and understand pollution transport within the basin and especially in rivers and creeks directly draining into Svihov reservoir, which accumulate portable drinking water for central Bohemia.
Specific features
Intensive agriculture, together with the high proportion of drained land, puts this source of drinking water at risk from accelerated surface and subsurface runoff and associated pollution.
That is why the agricultural management is limited in selected areas to prevent pollution of surface water and, to keep water quality in Svihov reservoir on sustainable target values.
Relevant Users / Stakeholders
All sub catchments lies within Zelivka basin which belongs to Vltava basin. Vltava river authority, state enterprise is the administrator of the basin and also main stakeholder – they not only provided necessary data but also be main consumer of the outputs. Another import stakeholder is VUMOP – this research institute also provided important and relevant data and knowledge from research microcatchment Cernici. They will be interested in any further analyses and model outputs from the Želivka river basin project.
Used tools
MIKE SHE + MIKE 1D Water movement (WM) + Advection-Dispersion transport (AD)
Lead
CzechGlobe
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