ALPMON FINAL REPORT - ARC systems research

Contract ENV4-CT96-0359 ALPMON
2.3.1.3.7 Task: Planning Recreation Activities
The data described up to now allow a landscape assessment to find suitable areas for different tourism
activities. For example, the information about aspect and slope together with additional geological
information can help to find new places for ski runs or ski lifts.
In our area we took a closer look at the hiking tourism. A hiking information system was created. New
hiking routes can be chosen and described with the aid of GIS and remote sensing data. This hiking
information system can be used by the Tourism Administration to find out new route advises or it can
be used by the tourists themselves for planning their tour for the day. Hiking tourists can choose new
routes independently of the suggestions of the Tourist Office and get information like way length,
altitude profile, aspect or forest or open area along the trail.
2.3.2 Modelling of Water Run Off, Mangfall and Sulm Test Sites (LMU, JR)
2.3.2.1 Introduction and Objectives
All land utilisation changes, irrespective of whether they are the result of set aside policies, or damage
to forests, e.g. uprooted trees due to gale-force winds, are likely to effect the hydrological cycle and the
quality of the water. Liebscher (1991) further stated that regional climatic changes may also have an
impact on the hydrologic balance of surface waters in Central Europe. In alpine areas increases in
temperatures are expected to affect snow melt periods and also the altitudes up to which snow is likely
to melt, which again is likely to represent an additional hazard potential, as e.g. due to higher volumes
of runoff.
The hydrological problems to be solved or at least bypassed are identified by Braun et al., (1997) to be
related to the extreme heterogeneity of surface and underground to be handled. Consequently
hydrological models require very different parameters like duration, intensity and sequence but also the
cluster and cell size for precipitation, water net structure, topography/relief, land use, soil and
geological characteristics.
Alpine conditions represent a special challenge for water run off modelling. The complexity of the
interrelations between interception by vegetation coverage, infiltration into the soil, surface run off,
precipitation history, temperature, snow coverage and snow melt u.s.o., as well as the effects of soil
condition changes (e.g. soil pore volume changes) following the defined reduction of crown coverage
by selective logging have been studied in detail over a time period of around ten years in the frame of a
research project funded by the German Ministry of Research and Technology (Breitsameter et al. ,
1993, Breitsameder, 1996, Moeschke, 1998).
Further important aspects are data acquisition and processing as well as data preparation (analysis,
filtering, regional adaptation), i.e. the entire range of tasks from pre-processing to the development of
files for model-specific parameters and records. One of the reasons for this emphasis on the
availability of data is that many of the available models have proved unsuitable for practical
applications because data was not sufficiently available. It would therefore be advantageous if in future
only models were used which can be easily adapted to any given catchment area and do not require
lengthy and costly periods of data measurement and acquisition before each new application.
Generally, precipitation-runoff-models like TOPMODEL (Beven, 1994) or WaSiM-ETH (Schulla, 1997)
are used to describe run-off patterns as well as material displacement caused by erosion-inducing
precipitation in medium-scale catchment areas (AGNPS 3.65 - Agricultural Non-Point Source Pollution
Model (Young et al., 1989); GAME - GIS - supported run-off model based on precipitation events;
Bayerisches Landesamt für Wasserwirtschaft, LfW). They are employed to describe current water and
material movement, to predict future movement patterns and to forecast specific events (floods).
ASGI, german Abfluß (water run-off), Stofftransport- (material displacement) Modellierung (modelling),
using Geo Information Systems, is a complex, modular based hydrological model which is based on
the TOPMODEL approach and is integrated in a GIS environment. It belongs to the group of
“distributed models”. ASGI is developed to calculate run off processes and solid matter fluxes in mesoscale
hydrological catchments with high temporal and spatial resolution. ASGI describes in grid
elements the components of water cycle and facilitates to model decisive processes of the precipitation
run off as following (Molnár & Kasper 1998), e.g.:
� interpolation of point coded meteorological input data to be implemented in grid data model
� storage of water by soil and vegetation and the resulting reduction of evaporation
JR, RSDE, ALU, LMU, Seibersdorf, WSL 31