Ecohydrological aspects of urban catchments
2013
Lepeška Tomáš
The urban proportion of the world’s human population is rapidly growing. This change in demography has brought land use transformations that have a number of documented environmental and landscape-ecological effects. The most consistent and pervasive effect is an increase in impervious surface cover within urban catchments, which alters natural infiltration, runoff of precipitation and hydrology of streams. In addition to imperviousness, runoff from urbanized surfaces as well as municipal and industrial discharges results in increased loadings of contaminants to stream ecosystems. Growing urban areas represent opportunities for ecologists interested in studying disturbance of river ecosystems, soil sealing, and effective landscape management. Forty-five percent of model catchment area is covered by impervious surfaces consisting mainly from buildings (40,41 %), streets (31,01 %) and parking lots 25,28 %).
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