EcoSpring (2023-2026)

Climate change is expected to have a significant impact to the hydrology of Alpine regions promoting more frequent and more intense hydrological extremes such as droughts and floods. In addition, precipitation will decrease during summer and increase during winter with delayed and shorter snow cover. In fact, freshwater resources and biodiversity hotspots that are strongly related to mountain regions are under increasing pressure with climate changes challenging the resilience of water resources and ecosystems. Base flow of alpine headwaters is almost exclusively contributed by spring discharge draining aquifers. Groundwater recharge and storages are without doubt, a crucial resource for water supply to humans and the alpine ecosystems. In light of the importance of spring water as a primary resource and its contribution to the alpine hydrology, it is surprising that the impact of climate change on its runoff pattern including future predictions has rarely been addressed in the past. Another aspect is that monitoring of springs as currently operated focuses on physical-chemical indicators only, with ecological features including the biodiversity of microbial and faunal communities key ecosystem functions being ignored. Against this background, the ÖAW funded project EcoSpring addresses the following overarching two research questions: (i) How will spring discharge, and in further consequence, base flow in alpine headwaters respond to climate change in terms of water quantity, hydrochemical and microbiological-ecological quality? (ii) Is there a connection between the hydrogeological and microbial characteristics of springs and will a combined eco- hydro(geo)logical approach, using microbial species and groups as environmental tracers, deliver an improved understanding and knowledge base for future water resources management?

To address these research questions, targeted investigations at springs will be conducted at a regional and a local scale. A spring discharge classification will be developed based on analysis of hydrological long-term data from more than 80 springs distributed over whole Austria provided by the federal authorities. Delineation of the spring catchments and coupled rainfall-runoff and isotopic modelling approaches will enhance the prediction and quantification of the spring discharge response with respect to different climate change scenarios.

Lead partner: Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Graz (Gerfried Winkler, gerfried.winkler@uni-graz.at)

Core team: Department of Functional & Evolutionary Ecology, University of Vienna (Filip Boanca, Christian Griebler), Geosphere Austria (Michael Avian, Klaus Haslinger)

Partner: Politechnical University of Tirana, Agricultural University of Tirana, Albania, and University of Innsbruck, the BOKU, and the University of Vienna, Austria.