Low Flow and Drought Management: Challenges and Solutions

Event: Workshop
Date: 3 September 2019
Location: Essen, Germany
Speaker: Dr. Ulf Stein

Jenny Tröltzsch

Mario Sommerhäuser (Emschergenossenschaft)

Risch Tratschin (EBP Schweiz AG)

Due to climate change, the Emscher region is expected to face increased challenges from low flows and drought in the coming decades. Low water flows and, in extreme cases, even dry waterfalls not only impair important ecological and hydrological quality parameters of the Emscher and its tributaries in the long term: the drought period in summer 2018 has shown what effects can be expected in the short term.

Low flows and drought bring new challenges for various sectors. This requires adaptation strategies, planning processes, technological solutions and new management concepts for affected water bodies. In addition to cooperation between the affected sectors, an important success factor is the coordination of various processes.

The target group of the workshop were participants from nature conservation, urban water management, river maintenance, agriculture and forestry, as well as landscape, urban and regional planning who are concerned with planning and strategic issues in their field of expertise.

The workshop focused on the following objectives:

Identification of challenges caused by low flows and drought in the Emscher region
Sharing experiences on challenges and solutions in other regions, taking the example of water scarcity in Switzerland
Identification and discussion of possible solutions for coordination of low flow management and water resource management in the Emscher region

Jenny Tröltzsch and Ulf Stein gave an introduction to the workshop and presented possible solutions and instruments for cross-sector coordination in the Emscher region.

The workshop was conducted within the research project STEER (Increasing Good Governance for Achieving the Objectives of Integrated Water Resources Management).

There is still a need to raise awareness of low flow management among key actors at local and regional level.

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Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany
Organizer: Ecologic Institute, Germany

Emschergenossenschaft, Germany
Partner: University of Osnabrück, Germany
Speaker: Dr. Ulf Stein

Jenny Tröltzsch

Mario Sommerhäuser (Emschergenossenschaft)

Risch Tratschin (EBP Schweiz AG)
Team: Dr. Ulf Stein

Jenny Tröltzsch

Robynne Sutcliffe, Emschergenossenschaft

Franziska Meergans, University of Osnabrück
Date: 3 September 2019
Location: Essen, Germany
Language: German
Project: Increasing Good Governance for Achieving the Objectives of Integrated Water Resources Management (STEER)
Project ID: 2290
Keywords: Adaptation

Governance

Water

Events

water, river, Emscher, drought, low flows, governance, governance instruments, management, precaution, water resources, river basins, water governance, water management, management system, coordination gaps, coordination deficits

Germany, Emscher region