Temporary Rivers: Management Tools for Climate Change Adaptation

Paolo Vezza
Politecnico di Torino
Friday, 2 June 2023 - 11:00

Temporary rivers (TRs) are defined as watercourses that may dry up for some period of time within the year. At the global scale, TRs represent more than 50% of the world’s river network, demonstrating that non-perennial rivers are the rule rather than the exception on Earth. In addition, TRs are becoming more and more common in this era due to the combined effect of climate change and increasing water demand. TRs have been overlooked by hydrologists. Most freshwater science has been focused on the management and conservation of perennial rivers (i.e., rivers that continuously flow). Nowadays, management frameworks and technical expertise need to be developed or adapted to conserve TRs, particularly for Climate Change adaptation in the Mediterranean area, facing the reduction of summer low flows. A paradigm shift is urgently needed towards a new social perceptions of Temporary Rivers, because flow intermittency will mostly represent our river network in the next future. This talk will present this new paradigm, to transform the water management challenge into a driver for innovation and new social organisation of water use. In addition, the talk will highlight the important role education plays in creating a new, responsible and wise water culture, as well as in enabling sustainable solutions to manage Temporary Rivers (TRs) for future generations.

Place: 

Ciudad Politécnica de la Innovación
Edificio 8E, Acceso J, Planta 4ª (Salón Descubre. Cubo Rojo)
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia | Camino de Vera s/n

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Short CV: 

Paolo Vezza works in the field of water engineering, including theoretical and applied research in fluvial hydraulics and geomorphology, hydrology, aquatic ecology, water management. Since he got the PhD in 2007, he worked as post-doctoral fellow in Italy, Spain and UK. From 2011 to 2013, I held a Marie Curie Fellowship hosted by the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, in the framework of the HolRiverMed project (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF-275577). He is currently based at Politecnico di Torino working as Associate Professor in Hydraulics at the Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering (DIATI). In the last ten years, he has collaborated in several research projects focused on water management and protection, framed in different European countries (Italy, Spain, Greece, UK, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden) as well as in Latin America, Asia and Africa. He currently is the coordinator of the RIVERTEMP project, (2022-1-IT02-KA220-HED-000086223, funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Commission), in which INGENIO-UPV is a project partner.