Zelivka River Basin, Czech Republic
Location
The River Želivka basin is situated in Central Bohemia and Highlands Region in the Czech Republic. It covers an area of ~1200 km2, of which the area of the Švihov reservoir (309 millions of m3), located ~70km south-east of Prague, is the most important reservoir within Czech Republic and biggest in Central and Eastern Europe.
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 the 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. Within the basin, there are 136 water bodies, the largest of these is the Svihov water reservoir,which supplies drinking water to the capital city of Prague, the Central Bohemian Region, and parts of the South Bohemian and Vysocina Regions. For this reason, it is a strategic source of water for Czech Republic and water quality protection needs to be given special attention.
Martinický Creek catchment (113 km2) and its sub-catchments are subject to 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.
The basin is primarily used for agriculture. Intensive agriculture, together with the high proportion of drained land, puts the source of drinking water at risk from accelerated surface and subsurface runoff and associated pollution. That is why 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.
Specific features
The work on the Zelivka test site within the PHISHES project is carried out on three spatial levels:
- the entire river basin,
- the selected experimental area of the Martinicky Creek,
- smaller sub‑catchments within the Martinicky Creek area, including the Svihov drinking‑water reservoir (volume: 309 million m³).
The main reason this basin is used in the PHISHES project is the large amount of available monitoring data. These data – covering soil, groundwater, and surface water – provide a strong basis for modeling how fertilizers and pesticides move through the system, and help to identify best practices and adaptation measures that can improve water quality under changing climate conditions.
Used tools
Healthy soil and its properties affect water quality parameters, both surface and groundwater. The modelling trains were selected carefully and consist of: MIKE SHE + ECOLAB and DAISY. Learn more.
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.
Lead
CzechGlobe: learn more.