The Tisza River Project

Objectives
The general objective was to save the water resources and ecological values with the help of integrated catchment management tools and to secure the sustainable use of the resources of the Tisza River Basin. The scientific objective was to develop a "real-life-scale" integrated catchment model system. In this the term "real-life scale" means the development (and selection) of practical application oriented set of tools, (set of computer models for water flow, water quality and ecosystem functioning), that are exactly tailored to the issues to be solved and the availability of data. The establishment of an international database of the Tisza River Basin was also a major objective. The evaluation of the project proposal gave a special emphasis on the ecohydrological approach to the revitalisation of the large many unique wetlands, oxbow lakes, along the Tisza River and its tributaries.

Scientific achievements of practical importance:
The overall scientific achievement is a set of divers products that can be grouped, rather arbitrarily, into the following main categories:
1/ Models, developed for and/or adopted to the Tisza River Project, which include hydrological and hydraulic models, water quality models, ecosystem models and other model-like calculation tools to support the use of these models. A relatively large set of these models was developed and applied to the river basin and to its sub-basins, to various rivers and to selected wetlands (oxbow lakes) along the river system. The models, forming together "the real-life scale catchment model" were used for the analysis of various management strategies with due concern to the requirements of the Water Framework Directive and to other national strategies. These models were developed and applied by various partners as follows:

A distributed parameter hydrological model WetSpa by Partner 8 (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB.LH, Belgium, applied to the Tisza Basin and three sub-basins: Zagyva (H), Hornad (SK), Lapus (Ro). a/1) A monthly conceptual hydrological model by Partner 5 (Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute, SLHI, Slovakia in co-operation of Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, SK).

A hydrological and ecological set of modelling tools used by Partner 11 (Centre of Ecology and Hydrology, NERC.IH, United Kingdom) for the wetland of the Tisza Basin.

A set of various hydrological and hydraulic models developed or applied by Partner 1 VITUKI, Hungary. The flood-forecasting model of VITUKI was used for analysing climate-change and precipitation distribution scenarios of the entire basin, while the hydrodynamic model of VITUKI (developed by Dr. P. Bakonyi) was used for analysing flood control scenarios of the lower reaches within Hungary.

A public domain hydraulic modelling tool called HecRas, applied to various sub basins (Hornad SK, Lapus RO) by the respective partners and to the middle Tisza in Hungary by VITUKI

The application of system GEOENVIRON for risk assessment (Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute, SLHI and Water Research Institute, WRI, both Bratislava, Slovak republic).

The water quality models of VITUKI. The whole-basin model SENSMOD:
Model SESMOD, a Simple Experimental Non-point Source Model, was developed at VITUKI for relating point and non-point source pollution loads to in-stream measured load values. This ensures calibration, thus providing a basin wide water quality management planning tool. For the Tisza Basin the model was fully restructured and reprogrammed for identifying missing load components (e.g. identifying non-accounted loads).

The accidental pollution model DYNDIS of VITUKI was developed and tested with earlier accidental pollution load events. It has been restructured in this project for application in the Tisza basin. Simulation results are very good but the serious lack of data, thus the lack of appropriate hydraulic models, this model could not be calibrated for the entire basin (a future and very urgent need).

The wetland model EcohydSim of VITUKI. This model, one of a series of various lake models of VITUKI, was tested earlier in a number of Hungarian case studies. In this project it was adopted to the special conditions of oxbow lakes and completed with a relatively detailed hydrological sub-model that allowed the simulation of flood-inundations of the oxbows. Results shown below are just indications of the capabilities of the model in the hopefully future case when sufficient data could allow the calibration of such models.

2/ An international database of the Tisza River Basin, produced by Partner 9 UJENA.GEO, is accessible via the web-based Tisza River Information System TRIS. This system was filled, with the available GIS, monitoring and other data by the Tisza Basin Partners (H, RO, SK) is still operational, at the time of writing this dissemination leaflet and attempts are being made to maintain the system beyond the time frames of the project. Partners HGI and TERRAET have contributed to the development of the GIS of the Tisza Basin.

3/ A very complex set of ecological, chemical and hydrological (ecohydrological) measurements and data evaluation results were achieved by Austrian, Hungarian and Slovak partners, which stemmed from an intensive field programme of a high number of wetlands (oxbow lakes) along the floodplains of the rivers of the Tisza River Basin. The scientific achievements include among others a so far unmatched evaluation of the state of these wetlands (also by internet based international system), novel ecohydrological approaches to revitalisation, and modelling based analysis of revitalisation scenarios.

4/ To the last group we listed a number of other written products (mostly reports of the consortium partners and their sub contractors). Among these one of the most important ones was the review of the water and environmental management issues of the entire Tisza Basin compiled by Partner 5 SLHI (SK) on the basis of the inputs of all Tisza Basin partners. An enormous work of a 100 pages report + 57 (!) annexes. To this result-category belong the 16 thematic annexes of the main final report and the 11 final reports (one of each partners).

Herewith we also must emphasise the role of Partner 2 TERRAET (Geonardo Ltd., H), which cared for all pubic awareness and dissemination activities of the project, maintaining the project web-site, publishing leaflets and newsletters, organising road-shows and on-line conferences, etc. Similarly we must mention the large work of Partner 2 HGI (Hungary) on the organisation of end-user involvement by organising workshops, creating also a meta-information system for that purpose (WP2).

Last but not least a few words on the demonstration software MoRes, which is attached to this dissemination document. MoRes was designed to illustrate the use of models, starting from a map-like model-screen of the Tisza River Network. It also offers illustrative slide-show materials of the partners on their work. With this dissemination material and software we (the Consortium) wish to urge stakeholders (firstly the international organisations, the national water- and environmental authorities and potential funding agencies) to provide support for the follow-up activities of this Project, since the real work needs to be started.

Conclusions and notes on socio-economic relevance and policy implications:

Major model-supported and other results of the project were as follows:

The ecohydrological results of this project may significantly contribute to all policies related to the protection of aquatic ecosystems (with special regard to wetlands). We would especially call the attention to the improvement of the monitoring systems of wetlands (the unique oxbow lakes of the Tisza Basin, many of whose are Ramsar sites), as present knowledge on both the hydrology and ecology of these wetlands is highly inadequate for scientifically based revitalisation.
The analysis of climate-change and precipitation scenarios with hydrological and hydraulic models resulted in some very important findings, such as that higher floods than observed so far may occur, needing upgraded flood-control strategies (with the meaning that presently contemplated strategies, such as the VTT in Hungary, may not be sufficient to cope with floods, thus urging an international co-operative flood control action plan).
On pollution control one of our major findings, that non-point (non-identified) sources dominate most of the pollutant loads of the river system, may be a well justified basis of changing overall policies of water pollution control. (With a strong bearing on the implementation of the Water Framework Directive.)
We also identified and proved the urgent need for developing calibrated and verified accidental pollution spill forecasting models. (Implying also the need for all-basin calibrated hydrological-hydraulic models.)
The old-novel approach of returning to traditional land and water use techniques in former flood basins (The "fok" or "notch" management approach) could have a strong bearing on the economy, flood-control, fisheries, ecological conservation, ecotourism and thus on the quality of life (when adhered to and applied).

The outputs of the project may have a series of very important bearings on both the achieving of the social and the economic objectives of the nations of the Tisza River Basin and also may have significant impact on those of the Community as a whole. This is so because the three main problem areas addressed in this Project (simulation of flood scenarios and flood control strategies; simulation of water quality conditions -also of accidental spills- and analysis of water pollution control strategies; and the evaluation of the state of unique wetland ecosystems, with outlooks to revitalisation) have a very strong -if not deterministic- impact on both the economic conditions and on the quality of life in this river basin, which latter is predominantly defined by that of the water. The major policy implication is that the results of this project (the data base and the models) can provide vital assistance to the River Basin Management Planning required for the Water Framework Directive (especially if they are maintained for future uses!).