Title: Quantifying River Floodplain Ecosystem Services of the Austrian Danube and Its Two Tributaries; Traisen and Morava
Author: Praise Ainomugisha
Supervising Institution: BOKU University
Year: 2024
Abstract:
Rivers and their floodplains provide vital ecosystem services, including provisioning, cultural, and regulating ones. Human activities such as hydropower, flood control, agriculture, and navigation have reduced their capacity to deliver several services. Legal frameworks like the EU-Water Framework Directive (WFD), EU-Flood Risk Directive, Natura 2000, and the EU-Habitat Directive aim for sustainable water use but face challenges due to conflicting interests between sectors. Restoring hydrological connectivity can improve ecological functionality and at least partly ecosystem services. This study evaluated ecosystem services in the floodplains of the Austrian Danube, and the two tributaries, the Traisen and Morava Rivers, focusing on restored and the unrestored sections. Using spatial data and indicator-based evaluations, ecosystem service scores were assessed on a standardized scale, 0 (no provisioning),1(very low),2 (low),3 (moderate),4 (good),5 (very good). Results showed significant spatial differences in ecosystem services, regulating and cultural the most provided and provisioning services least common. Regulating ecosystem services were most prevalent in long- term restored areas, followed by cultural services and provisioning services the least. The cultural services highest in the restored sections of Morava. The results also revealed that in the recently restored floodplains of Traisen river, regulating and cultural ecosystem services were the most provided. For the calculated ecosystem services, there was not significant difference between ecosystem services scores for the restored and the not restored sections. Overall, the study underscored the importance of quantifying ecosystem services for effective water resource management and highlights the positive impact of restoration on ecosystem service delivery.
Key words: ecosystem services, ecosystem-based management, spatial analysis, indicator-based approaches, river floodplains.