Quantifying the impacts of climate variation, damming, and flow regulation on river thermal dynamics: a case study of the Wloclawek Reservoir in the Vistula River, Poland

Background River damming inevitably reshapes water thermal conditions that are important to the general health of river ecosystems. Although a lot of studies have addressed the damming's thermal impacts, most of them just assess the overall effects of climate variation and human activities on river thermal dynamics. Less attention has been given to quantifying the impact of climate variation, damming and flow regulation, respectively. In addition, for rivers that have already faced an erosion problem in downstream channels, an adjustment of the hydroelectric power plant operation manner is expected, which reinforces the need for understanding of flow regulation's thermal impact. To fill this gap, an air2stream-based approach is proposed and applied at the Wloclawek Reservoir in the Vistula River in Poland. Results In the years of 1952-1983, downstream river water temperature rose by 0.31 celcius after damming. Meanwhile, the construction of dam increased the average annual water temperature by 0.55 celcius, while climate change oppositely made it decreased by 0.26 celcius. In addition, for the seasonal impact of damming, autumn was the most affected season with the warming reached 1.14 celcius, and the least affected season was winter when water temperature experienced a warming of 0.1 celcius. The absolute values of seasonal average temperature changes due to flow regulation were less than 0.1 celcius for all the seasons. Conclusions The impacts of climate variation, damming, and flow regulation on river water temperatures can be evaluated reasonably on the strength of the proposed methodology. Climate variation and damming led to general opposite impacts on the downstream water temperature at the Wloclawek Reservoir before 1980s. It is noted that the climate variation impact showed an opposite trend compared to that after 1980s. Besides, flow regulation below dam hardly affected downstream river water temperature variation. This study extends the current knowledge about impacts of climate variation and hydromorphological conditions on river water temperature, with a study area where river water temperature is higher than air temperature throughout a year.

Automated summary

This study evaluated the impacts of climate variation, damming, and flow regulation on river water temperatures using an air2stream-based approach at the Wloclawek Reservoir in Poland. Results showed that damming increased downstream river water temperature by 0.31 celcius from 1952-1983, while climate change and damming had opposite impacts on water temperature. Additionally, flow regulation had minimal impact on downstream river water temperature variation.