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Assessing the Establishment and Implementation of Environmental Flows in Spain

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Abstract

The alteration of natural flows due to water withdrawals and the presence of hydraulic infrastructure poses significant threats to the integrity of riverine ecosystems. The establishment of environmental flows (EF) has been conceived as a water management tool to mitigate the impact of in-stream flows alteration. To date, a large body of literature has focused on methods to define EF, but less attention has been paid to documenting and assessing their actual implementation on the ground. This article provides a framework to describe and assess the process of design, application, and monitoring of EF at a river basin level. The framework is applied to Spain, where significant efforts have been made during the past decade to define and implement EF across the country. The goal of the paper is to identify strengths and opportunities for improving the implementation of EF at country level. The Spanish legislation establishes that EF should contribute to the achievement of the good ecological status of surface water bodies as required by the European Union Water Framework Directive. Several pitfalls in the design, application, and monitoring of this important river management measure constrain the ability of the existing EF to deliver that fundamental outcome.

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Notes

  1. No information could be found in the RBMPs about the methods used in the remaining RBDs.

  2. It should be noted that compliance criteria changed between those reporting periods.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by a research grant provided by the Botín Foundation and Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán El Bueno Foundation. The authors thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback of the paper; Alberto Garrido and Antonio Bolinches for their valuable comments and Guillermo Reboreda for his assistance with data preprocessing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Geodinámica, Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencias Geológicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, España

    Gabriel Mezger & Lucia De Stefano

  2. Observatorio del Agua, Fundación Botín, Madrid, Spain

    Gabriel Mezger & Lucia De Stefano

  3. Departamento de Sistemas y Recursos Naturales, E. T. S. de Ingeniería de Montes, Forestal y del Medio Natural, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, España

    Marta González del Tánago

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  1. Gabriel Mezger
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  2. Lucia De Stefano
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Correspondence to Gabriel Mezger.

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Mezger, G., De Stefano, L. & González del Tánago, M. Assessing the Establishment and Implementation of Environmental Flows in Spain. Environmental Management 64, 721–735 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-019-01222-2

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