MERGING GEOGLOWS MODEL AND DISCHARGE DATA FOR BIAS-CORRECTED CHARACTERISATION OF HYDROLOGY FOR SURVIVING STURGEON HABITAT ON RIVER RIONI IN GEORGIA, EASTERN BLACK SEA

Abstract

Georgian river Rioni still hosts the last remaining sturgeon habitat in the Eastern Black Sea. WWF Caucasus Programme Office is undertaking efforts to conserve and potentially expand this critically important spawning area. Long-term hydrological data, such as daily discharge time series, is indispensable for characterising the entire river and this ecological site in particular. GEO Global Water Sustainability tool GEOGloWS was applied to derive long term (over 40 years) modelled streamflow time series for the stretch of interest at Rioni. Discharge data kindly provided by Vartsikhe Hydropower Cascade, was successfully used to bias-correct the global dataset and thus significantly expand time coverage against the period of available discharge data (10 years). Experience with merging some other global & local datasets is also reported in this work.