Academic literature on the topic 'La Trobe River (Vic )'

Phytoplankton was sampled on a monthly basis for 1 year at five stations on the La Trobe River in Gippsland, Victoria. In the upper, mostly forested, reaches of the river, chlorophyll a concentrations and cell densities were uniformly very low, and the dominant algae were detached benthic diatoms and flagellated species. In the plains section of the river, downstream of an impoundment (Lake Narracan), spring and autumn blooms occurred, with a marked reduction in abundance in midsummer and midwinter. The lowland planktonic flora was dominated by centric diatoms, particularly Melosira distans in autumn and Skeletonema potamos in spring.

Diel oxygen-curve techniques were used to estimate gross primary productivity (PG), community respiration and net daily metabolism (NDM) for five reaches of the La Trobe River from headwaters to lowlands. All reaches were heterotrophic throughout the study (December 1980-November 1981) with NDM ranging from - 1 to -6 g O2 m-2. PG was consistently very low at the most upstream station and highest in the middle reaches of the river, where both benthic and planktonic contributions were important. At the most downstream station benthic productivity was negligible but planktonic productivity was appreciable in spring and autumn. PG in the river may be limited in the upper reaches by lack of light (due to shading by vegetation) and low levels of nutrients, and in the lower reaches by turbidity and increased depth.

Abstract. This study evaluates predictive uncertainties in the snow hydrology of the Fraser River Basin (FRB) of British Columbia (BC), Canada, using the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model forced with several high-resolution gridded climate datasets. These datasets include the Canadian Precipitation Analysis and the thin-plate smoothing splines (ANUSPLIN), North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), University of Washington (UW) and Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC) gridded products. Uncertainties are evaluated at different stages of the VIC implementation, starting with the driving datasets, optimization of model parameters, and model calibration during cool and warm phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The inter-comparison of the forcing datasets (precipitation and air temperature) and their VIC simulations (snow water equivalent – SWE – and runoff) reveals widespread differences over the FRB, especially in mountainous regions. The ANUSPLIN precipitation shows a considerable dry bias in the Rocky Mountains, whereas the NARR winter air temperature is 2 °C warmer than the other datasets over most of the FRB. In the VIC simulations, the elevation-dependent changes in the maximum SWE (maxSWE) are more prominent at higher elevations of the Rocky Mountains, where the PCIC-VIC simulation accumulates too much SWE and ANUSPLIN-VIC yields an underestimation. Additionally, at each elevation range, the day of maxSWE varies from 10 to 20 days between the VIC simulations. The snow melting season begins early in the NARR-VIC simulation, whereas the PCIC-VIC simulation delays the melting, indicating seasonal uncertainty in SWE simulations. When compared with the observed runoff for the Fraser River main stem at Hope, BC, the ANUSPLIN-VIC simulation shows considerable underestimation of runoff throughout the water year owing to reduced precipitation in the ANUSPLIN forcing dataset. The NARR-VIC simulation yields more winter and spring runoff and earlier decline of flows in summer due to a nearly 15-day earlier onset of the FRB springtime snowmelt. Analysis of the parametric uncertainty in the VIC calibration process shows that the choice of the initial parameter range plays a crucial role in defining the model hydrological response for the FRB. Furthermore, the VIC calibration process is biased toward cool and warm phases of the PDO and the choice of proper calibration and validation time periods is important for the experimental setup. Overall the VIC hydrological response is prominently influenced by the uncertainties involved in the forcing datasets rather than those in its parameter optimization and experimental setups.

Abstract. This is the second paper of a two-part series on introducing an experimental seasonal hydrological forecasting system over the Yellow River basin in northern China. While the natural hydrological predictability in terms of initial hydrological conditions (ICs) is investigated in a companion paper, the added value from eight North American Multimodel Ensemble (NMME) climate forecast models with a grand ensemble of 99 members is assessed in this paper, with an implicit consideration of human-induced uncertainty in the hydrological models through a post-processing procedure. The forecast skill in terms of anomaly correlation (AC) for 2 m air temperature and precipitation does not necessarily decrease over leads but is dependent on the target month due to a strong seasonality for the climate over the Yellow River basin. As there is more diversity in the model performance for the temperature forecasts than the precipitation forecasts, the grand NMME ensemble mean forecast has consistently higher skill than the best single model up to 6 months for the temperature but up to 2 months for the precipitation. The NMME climate predictions are downscaled to drive the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) land surface hydrological model and a global routing model regionalized over the Yellow River basin to produce forecasts of soil moisture, runoff and streamflow. And the NMME/VIC forecasts are compared with the Ensemble Streamflow Prediction method (ESP/VIC) through 6-month hindcast experiments for each calendar month during 1982–2010. As verified by the VIC offline simulations, the NMME/VIC is comparable to the ESP/VIC for the soil moisture forecasts, and the former has higher skill than the latter only for the forecasts at long leads and for those initialized in the rainy season. The forecast skill for runoff is lower for both forecast approaches, but the added value from NMME/VIC is more obvious, with an increase of the average AC by 0.08–0.2. To compare with the observed streamflow, both the hindcasts from NMME/VIC and ESP/VIC are post-processed through a linear regression model fitted by using VIC offline-simulated streamflow. The post-processed NMME/VIC reduces the root mean squared error (RMSE) from the post-processed ESP/VIC by 5–15 %. And the reduction occurs mostly during the transition from wet to dry seasons. With the consideration of the uncertainty in the hydrological models, the added value from climate forecast models is decreased especially at short leads, suggesting the necessity of improving the large-scale hydrological models in human-intervened river basins.

Between February 1975 and March 1977, periphyton from artificial substrata (glass microscope slides) and water samples for physicochemical analysis were obtained from eight sites on the lowland section of the La Trobe River, which flows through agricultural, urban and industrial areas. Total organic matter on the slides, estimated as weight loss on ignition, was usually highest in summer or autumn when river flows were low. However, chlorophyll a densities generally peaked in late winter and spring when nitrate concentrations were high, except at a site upstream of major urban and industrial areas, where a summer-autumn increase occurred. Thermal discharges from major power stations had no obvious effect on chlorophyll abundance, but did appear to substantially influence diatom assemblage composition from late summer to early winter, when river temperatures were highest. Downstream of the Morwell River confluence, diatom assemblages were influenced by a sharp increase in dissolved solids concentration and probably also by the grazing activities of snails (Ferrissia petterdi and Physastra gibbosa). The diatom flora at the most downstream site showed some evidence of recovery from thermal effects.

Abstract In this study, the Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies (PRECIS) and the Regional Climate Model (RegCM) system as well as the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) macroscale hydrologic model were integrated into a general framework to investigate impacts of future climates on the hydrologic regime of the Athabasca River basin. Regional climate models (RCMs) including PRECIS and RegCM were used to develop ensemble high-resolution climate projections for 1979–2099. RCMs were driven by the boundary conditions from the Hadley Centre Global Environment Model, version 2 with Earth system configurations (HadGEM2-ES); the Second Generation Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM2); and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Earth System Model with MOM (GFDL-ESM2M) under the representative concentration pathways (RCPs). The ensemble climate simulations were validated through comparison with observations for 1984–2003. The RCMs project increases in temperature, precipitation, and wind speed under RCPs across most of the Athabasca River basin. Meanwhile, VIC was calibrated using the University of Arizona Shuffled Complex Evolution method (SCE-UA). The performance of the VIC model in replicating the characteristics of the observed streamflow was validated for 1994–2003. Changes in runoff and streamflow under RCPs were then simulated by the validated VIC model. The validation results demonstrate that the ensemble-RCM-driven VIC model can effectively reproduce historical climatological and hydrological patterns in the Athabasca River basin. The ensemble-RCM-driven VIC model shows that monthly streamflow is projected to increase in the 2050s and 2080s under RCPs, with notably higher flows expected in the spring for the 2080s. This will have substantial impacts on water balance on the Athabasca River basin, thus affecting the surrounding industry and ecosystems. The developed framework can be applied to other regions for exploration of hydrologic impacts under climate change.

Abstract Using the Connecticut River basin as an example, this study assesses the extent to which remote sensing data can help improve hydrological modeling and how it may influence projected future hydrological trends. The dynamic leaf area index (LAI) derived from satellite remote sensing was incorporated into the Variable Infiltration Capacity model (VIC) to enable an interannually varying seasonal cycle of vegetation (VICVEG); the evapotranspiration (ET) data based on remote sensing were combined with ET from a default VIC simulation to develop a simple bias-correction algorithm, and the simulation was then repeated with the bias-corrected ET replacing the simulated ET in the model (VICET). VICET performs significantly better in simulating the temporal variability of river discharge at daily, biweekly, monthly, and seasonal time scales, while VICVEG better captures the interannual variability of discharge, particularly in the winter and spring, and shows slight improvements to soil moisture estimates. The methodology of incorporating ET data into VIC as a bias-correction tool also influences the modeled future hydrological trends. Compared to the default VIC, VICET portrays a future characterized by greater drought risk and a stronger decreasing trend of minimum river flows. Integrating remote sensing data with hydrological modeling helps characterize the range of model-related uncertainties and more accurately reconstruct historic river flow estimates, leading to a better understanding and prediction of hydrological response to future climate changes.

A beetle epidemic across the western United States has resulted in the death of millions of acres of forests. This beetle outbreak, referred to as “beetle kill”, has caused many to believe that such dramatic changes in land cover could potentially alter the hydrology of the impacted regions. One of the most important hydrological processes that beetle kill has the potential to impact is streamflow. This research evaluates the hydrologic impacts on streamflow from land cover change due to beetle kill in the North Platte River Basin (NPRB) (Colorado and Wyoming, USA) by utilizing the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrologic model. Utilizing the National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) dataset from 2005 / 2006 (onset of “beetle kill”) to more current conditions (2009), a decrease in tree cover of 16% to 40% was estimated. This decrease in tree cover was applied to VIC modeled streamflow from 1950 to 2000. The VIC model predicted a minimal increase in streamflow of approximately 5% which was not statistically significant.

The water resources status and availability of any river basin is of primary importance for overall and sustainable development of any river basin. This study has been done in Beas river basin which is located in North Western Himalaya for assessing the status of water resources in present and future climate change scenarios. In this study hydrological modelling approach has been used for quantifying the water balance components of Beas river basin upto Pandoh. The variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model has been used in energy balance mode for Beas river basin at 1km grid scale. The VIC model has been run with snow elevation zones files to simulate the snow module of VIC. The model was run with National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) forcing data (Tmax, Tmin, Rainfall and wind speed at 0.5degree resolution) from 1 Jan. 1999 to 31 Dec 2006 for calibration purpose. The additional component of glacier melt was added into overall river runoff using semi-empirical approach utilizing air temperature and glacier type and extent data. The ground water component is computed from overall recharge of ground water by water balance approach. The overall water balance approach is validated with river discharge data provided by Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) from 1994-2014. VIC routing module was used to assess pixel wise flow availability at daily, monthly and annual time scales. The mean monthly flow at Pandoh during study period varied from 19 - 1581 m³/s from VIC and 50 to 1556 m³/sec from observation data, with minimum water flow occurring in month of January and maximum flow in month of August with annual R² of 0.68. The future climate change data is taken from CORDEX database. The climate model of NOAA-GFDL-ESM2M for IPCC RCP scenario 4.5 and 8.5 were used for South Asia at 0.44 deg. grid from year 2006 to 2100. The climate forcing data for VIC model was prepared using daily maximum and minimum near surface air temperature, daily precipitation and daily surface wind speed. The GFDL model also gives validation phase scenarios from 2006 to 2015, which are used to test the overall model performance with current data. The current assessment made by hydrological water balance based approach has given reasonable good results in Beas river basin. The main limitation of this study is lack of full representation of glacier melt flow using fully energy balance model. This component will be addressed in coming time and it will be integrated with tradition hydrological and snowmelt runoff models. The other limitation of current study is dependence on NCEP or other reanalysis of climate forcing data for hydrological modelling, this leads to mismatch between actual and simulated water balance components. This problem can be addressed if more ground based and fine resolution grid based hydro meteorological data are used as input forcing data for hydrological modelling.

In Australia, industrial relations research has focused almost exclusively on the major industrial relations institutions and their role in the determination of the rules of the workplace. Local workplace industrial relations and the interaction between worker and representatives and enterprise management has been a neglected area of research. This study attempts to rectify this situation. By focusing attention on the workplace a number of important questions are raised that have not been systematically addressed in Australian industrial relations research. In particular, what, if any, is the role of shop stewards in a centralised system dominated by unions, employers and tribunals organised on a state and national basis? If there is a role for shop stewards, how does this role manifest itself in terms of the stewards’ relationships with members, fellow shop stewards, union officials and management? Finally, what factors explain variations in role perceptions, and how does the adoption of a particular role affect the behaviour of shop stewards? (For complete abstract open the document)

Numerous studies indicate that the hydrology of a river basin is influenced by Land Use Land Cover (LULC) and climate. LULC affects the quality and quantity of water resources through its influence on Evapotranspiration (ET) and initiation of surface runoff while climate affects the intensity and spatial distribution of rainfall and temperature which are major drivers of the hydrologic cycle. Literature reports several works on either the effect of changing LULC or climate on the hydrology. However, changes in LULC and climate occur simultaneously in reality. Thus, there is a need to perform an integrated impact assessment of such changes on the hydrological regime at a basin scale. In order to carry out the impact assessment, physically-based hydrologic models are often employed. The present study focuses on assessment of the effect of changing LULC and climate on the hydrology of the Upper Ganga basin (UGB), India, using the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrologic model. In order to obtain the changes that have occurred in the LULC of the basin over a time period, initially LULC analysis is carried out. For this purpose, high resolution multispectral satellite imageries from Landsat are procured for the years 1973, 1980, 2000 and 2011. The images are pre-processed to project them to a common projection system and are then co-registered. The processed images are used for classification into different land cover classes. This step requires training sites which are collected during the field visit as part of this work. The classified images, thus obtained are used to analyse temporal changes in LULC of the region. The results indicate an increase in crop land and urban area of the region by 47% and 122% respectively from 1973 to 2011. After initial decline in dense forest for the first three decades, an increase in the dense forest is observed between 2000- 2011 (from 11.44% to 14.8%). Scrub forest area and barren land are observed to decline in the study region by 62% and 96% respectively since 1973. The land cover information along with meteorological data and soil data are used to drive the VIC model to investigate the impact of LULC changes on streamflow and evapotranspiration (ET) components of hydrology in the UGB. For the simulation purpose, the entire basin is divided into three regions (1) upstream (with Bhimgodha as the outlet), (2) midstream (with Ankinghat as the outlet) and (3) downstream (with Allahabad as the outlet). The VIC model is calibrated and validated for all the three regions independently at monthly scale. Model performance is assessed based on the criterion of normalized root mean square error (NRMSE), coefficient of determination (R2) and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE). It is observed that the model performed well with reasonable accuracy for upstream and midstream regions. In case of the downstream region, due to lack of observed discharge data, model performance could not be assessed. Hence, the simulations for the downstream region are performed using the calibrated model of the midstream region. The model outputs from the three regions are aggregated appropriately to generate the total hydrologic response of the UGB. Using the calibrated models for different region of the UGB, sensitivity analysis is performed by generating hydrologic scenarios corresponding to different land use (LU) and climate conditions. In order to investigate the impact of changing LU on hydrological variables, a scenario is generated in which climate is kept constant and LU is varied. Under this scenario, only the land cover related variables are altered in the model keeping the meteorological variables constant. Thus, the effect of LU change is segregated from the effect of climate. The results obtained from these simulations indicated that the change in LU significantly affects peak streamflow depth which is observed to be 77.58% more in August 2011 in comparison with the peak streamflow of August, 1973. Furthermore, ET is found to increase by 46.44% since 1973 across the entire basin. In order to assess the impact of changing climate on hydrological variables, a scenario is generated in which LU is kept constant and climate is varied from 1971-2005. Under this scenario, land cover related variables are kept constant in the model and meteorological variables are varied for different time periods. The results indicate decline in the simulated discharge for the years 1971, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2005, which is supported by decline in observed annual rainfall for the respective years. Amongst 1971 and 2005, year 2005 received 26% less rainfall resulting in 35% less discharge. Furthermore, ET is observed to be negligibly affected. To understand the integrated impact of changing LU and climate on hydrological variables, a scenario is generated in which both climate and LU are altered. Based on the data available, three years (1973, 1980 and 2000) are considered for the simulations. Under this scenario, both land cover and meteorological variables are varied in the model. The results obtained showed that the discharge hydrograph for the year 1980 has significantly higher peak compared to the hydrographs of years 1973 and 2000. This could be due to the fact that the year 1980 received maximum rainfall amongst the three years considered for simulations. Although the basin received higher rainfall in the year 1980 compared to that in 2000, ET from the basin in the year 1980 is found to be 21% less than that of the year 2000. This could be attributed to the change in LU that occurred between the years 1980 and 2000. Amongst the years 1973 and 2000, there is not much difference in the observed rainfall but ET for the year 2000 is observed to be significantly higher than that of year 1973. It is concluded from the present study that in the UGB, changing LULC contributes significantly to the changes in peak discharge and ET while rainfall pattern considerably influences the runoff pattern of the region. Future work proposed includes assessment of hydrologic response of basin under future LULC and climate scenarios. Also the model efficiency can be assessed by performing hydrologic simulations at different grid sizes.

After the Early Slavic period a number of changes took place, which was manifested, among others, in the construction of strongholds – fortified seats of local power. This stage of Slavic development, lasting approximately 200 years from the turn of the 7th and 8th century on, is called the Tribal phase. At that time, the areas of western Lesser Poland belonged to the Vistulan tribe. Their central seat was the stronghold on Wawel Hill in Kraków. At the end of the 10th century the Piasts began to play an active military and political role in the Vistula River basin. Their successful expansion gave rise to the Early State phase. After 966, as Christianity progressed, inhumation replaced cremation as the burial rite. The oldest row-arranged cemeteries were founded on the upper Vistula from the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries. They were used until end of the 12th century, or longer. Two such cemeteries were examined in the study area, in Wawrzeńczyce and Stręgoborzyce. They were abandoned with the consolidation of the parish network and the establishment of church cemeteries in the 13th century. Material culture of the Tribal phase – besides native production – yielded artifacts indicating contacts with areas south of the Carpathians, with the nomadic Avars and, after their fall, with Hungarians.

After the Early Slavic period a number of changes took place, which was manifested, among others, in the construction of strongholds – fortified seats of local power. This stage of Slavic development, lasting approximately 200 years from the turn of the 7th and 8th century on, is called the Tribal phase. At that time, the areas of western Lesser Poland belonged to the Vistulan tribe. Their central seat was the stronghold on Wawel Hill in Kraków. At the end of the 10th century the Piasts began to play an active military and political role in the Vistula River basin. Their successful expansion gave rise to the Early State phase. After 966, as Christianity progressed, inhumation replaced cremation as the burial rite. The oldest row-arranged cemeteries were founded on the upper Vistula from the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries. They were used until end of the 12th century, or longer. Two such cemeteries were examined in the study area, in Wawrzeńczyce and Stręgoborzyce. They were abandoned with the consolidation of the parish network and the establishment of church cemeteries in the 13th century. Material culture of the Tribal phase – besides native production – yielded artifacts indicating contacts with areas south of the Carpathians, with the nomadic Avars and, after their fall, with Hungarians.