Water Resources Quality and Management in Baltic Sea Countries by Abdelazim M. Negm & Martina Zelenakova & Katarzyna Kubiak-Wójcicka

Author:Abdelazim M. Negm & Martina Zelenakova & Katarzyna Kubiak-Wójcicka
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030397012
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

1 Introduction

The problem of assessing water resources and their use is not only of exceptional importance and relevance from a scientific point of view, but also acquires a strong socio-economic and political character in the last decades. On the one hand, that is due to the increasing role of anthropogenic factors related to water consumption for needs of population, industry and agriculture, as well as the impact on the conditions of the river flow formation. On the other hand, that is due to the factors caused by more noticeable changes in global and regional climate.

The Baltic Sea is the most substantial transboundary water body in Europe. It washes the shores of countries such as the Russian Federation, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Poland. More than 85 million people live in the basin, of which almost 15 million people live in a coastal zone of 10 km wide.

The Russian part of the Baltic Sea basin is challenging subject of research concerning distribution and formation of water resources, as well as its geographical location. Serious changes in the main factors determining the fluctuations of water resources and their change in time and territory have occurred in Russia over the last thirty years. That is why, the need for a modern assessment of renewable water resources and an assessment of their probable changes in the future for the territory of the Russian part of the Baltic Sea basin is an urgent task.

The purpose of this chapter is to summarize the results of studies carried out in Russia, and first of all at the State Hydrological Institute (SHI). It is also aimed at presenting an objective assessment of surface water resources, taking into account their changes under the climate impact for the case of the Russian part of the Baltic Sea basin, including estimates for the territory of the USSR.

SHI scientific school for the study of water resources and their use in the present and future is widely known among the world hydrological community. Since 1919 SHI scientists have been conducting complex researches, develop methodological approaches and periodically perform quantitative assessments of water resources and water balance of the territories of the former USSR and Russian Federation, which form the official basis for calculating the water supply of the population and the development of water-consuming industries of the country.

In different years SHI, in the framework of the different UNESCO and WMO projects, comprehensive studies and quantitative estimates of the world’s water resources and their use were completed, which were published by UNESCO in the monographs «World Water Balance and Water Resources of the Earth» (1974) [1], «World Water Resources at the Beginning of the 21st Century» (2003) [2] and in WMO «Water Resources as a Challenge of the Twenty-First Century» (2004) [3]. These monographs are published in English, widely known in the world and used by scientists in many countries.

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