Aims

This project aims at providing fundamental insights into the mid- to long-term geoecohydrological dynamics of rivers and floodplains under changing socio-ecological conditions. This will allow evaluating the sustainability of present-day integrated management and policies in river floodplains and provide a framework to revise environmental decision support systems for the future that takes into account the dynamic nature of floodplain systems.

The Future Floodplains project aims to develop the following end products:

• The reconstruction of the mid- to long-term geoecohydrological changes within river floodplains
• Individual models that simulate part of the geoecohydrology of floodplains: 
  
• a geomorphological model that simulate changes in river channel morphology, flood frequency and floodplain geomorphology
• A local hydrological model for floodplains coupled to a catchment-scale groundwater model.
• Ecological relations between abiotic and biotic characteristics of floodplains
• Development of decision support systems that anticipate to future changes in floodplain geoecohydrology. The various modelling approaches that are based on strategic basic research will be incorporated into a set of decision support systems that meet the needs of the various social users. The required outputs and the level of detail will be assessed in interaction with the social users.