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TRANSBOUNDARY WATER MANAGEMENTImage: CHRThe river bed in the Rio Bermejo basinroutes are prone to fall out of function due to natural hazards. Manyriver defence works have been undertaken in the past to locallyreduce natural hazard impact, such as retention dams to protectthe main road from lateral landslides. The river system shows avariety of natural hazards. Lateral hazards such as debris flows andlandslides constantly threaten to dam the main river, causing a lakebehind the obstacle and an outburst to infrastructure below it. Someprecipitation and discharge measurements are done, but the densernetwork needed for detailed information does not exist. Therefore,information about precipitation and discharge are not sufficientlyavailable for local use.Regarding the possibilities for future cooperation betweenCOBINABE and CHR it was stated that in the Rhine basin a lot ofexperiences are available in the field of economic, social and ecologicalimpacts of sediments. Much information related to institutional,administrative and legal aspects can be transferred and adapted toother regions. COBINABE emphasized that many investigationswere carried out in the Bermejo basin, but that many unsolvedproblems remain. Exchange of know-how, methods and proceduresbetween CHR and COBINABE could help to solve these problems,and COBINABE is interested in working together on a project basis.Although cooperation between CHR and COBINABE would be veryhelpful, it has not been realized until now. 4Current projectsThe contract for a study on ‘Discharge percentage from snowand glacier melt in the Rhine River and its tributaries’ was signedin December 2012. The project team is a consortium comprisingthe Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, the University ofZurich and consultancy HYDRON GmbH. Important from anorganizational aspect is the incorporation of the Federal State ofBaden-Württemberg, through the State Institute for Environment,Measurements and Nature Conservation (LUBW) in the project.LUBW provides the high-resolution water management modelLARSIM 1x1 km.The present activities focus on the collection andaccessibility of data sources, and on the methodologicalaspects of the data processing. The latter relates toquestions concerning climatic reconstruction since 1901;processing of snow data in the catchment up to Basel (bycooperation partner SLF-CH); and activities related to(empirical) data analysis with a conceptual aim. In Basel,work is in progress to develop a suitable method for thetransfer of snow water equivalents that are calculatedfrom snow heights in a plain area to the ‘real’ catchment,especially for high mountain regions. Regarding empiricaldata analysis, representative influencing variables forthe melting and accumulation processes of ice and snowin the upper catchments should be identified throughthe catchment overlapping comparison of processes. Thismight help to transfer gained knowledge to modelleddata series in a later stage of the project.Parallel consultations between the BfG and HYDRONare taking place about a project-orientated furtherdevelopment of the model LARSIM-ME (5x5 km). Inthis part of the Rhine basin north of Basel, a separateBfG contract will be assigned to improve height zoning.In this way more height zones are designated in the gridelements and temperatures are recalculated, resultingin better reproduction of the modelled snow dynamics.After the model improvement through height zoningsimulation, a simplified uncertainty analysis will becarried out, so different model variants can be comparedand additional calibrations performed if necessary.‘From source to mouth – A Sediment Budget ofthe River Rhine’ is a project that runs from July 2012until the end of 2014. Under the auspices of CHR,BfG, in cooperation with the Aachen UniversityInstitute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water ResourceManagement, is in charge of the project.[ 59 ]