A global high-resolution water quality model for climate change adaptation

Long-term climate change, extreme events, and seasonal variations in weather have
profound impacts on water quality of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. Degrading water quality
threatens the environment, ecosystem services, economies (drinking water production,
fisheries..) and global health.
Scientific studies typically omit the impacts of climate on water quality. To address this gap,
the proposed AXA chair program “A global high-resolution water quality model for
climate change adaptation” aims to study the impact of climate change on water quality
bridging the data gap and modeling gap, especially at global scales. Most of the state of the art
art global water quality models run at a yearly time step with a spatial resolution of multiple
squared kilometers (about 55 km by 55 km) and lack model evaluations. These temporal and
spatial resolutions are too general to meet regional or local objectives.
A global network of water quality IoT sensors will be developed in collaboration with
partners, using inexpensive Internet-of-Things sensors (temperature, turbidity, electronic
conductivity, nitrate, oxygen) that are currently developed at the VUB. The data will be
merged with remote sensing data and local observations using Artificial Intelligence.
A high-resolution (100m/daily) global water quality model will project climate scenarios.
To this purpose, the regional hydrological catchment model SWAT (Soil and Water
Assessment Tool -SWAT+ version) will be upscaled to global scales. The model will represent
point pollution, non-point pollution and atmospheric deposition. Human interventions are
represented through the land use dynamics including crop management and operations of
reservoirs. The model will be evaluated using data of remote sensing and sensor
observations. The model will produce historical simulations and future projections of
temperature, nitrogen, phosphorous, suspended sediments and algae.
New frameworks will be developed that account for water quality management
preserving climate changes.
Water quality projections will be integrated into sustainable water management strategies
safeguard the ecosystem goods and services freshwaters provide using the Climate
Adaptation frameworks, such as the Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA) -
UNESCO.
The project will deliver the first high-resolution global freshwater quality model that will
provide high resolution datasets to scientific communities (Inter-Sectorial Impact Model
Intercomparison Project/European Geophysical Union/…), maps of present and future
hotspots of water quality problems at global scale to the ICPP. The use of the model and
monitoring contribution to the UNESCO-IHP IX program through the Open Water Network
that is coordinated by the UNESCO Chair on Open Water Science and Education.