Contribution of rainfall vs. water management to Mediterranean wetland hydrology: Development of an interactive simulation tool to foster adaptation to climate variability

Mediterranean wetlands are increasingly managed to maintain their functions and services following modification in water allocation, embankment and climate change, calling for proactive and adaptive water management. In a first step, we used long-term monitoring of water levels in 37 adjacent embanked marshes in the Camargue as a repeated non-controlled experiment to build a hydrological model. Without information on water input/output by marsh users, we could nevertheless estimate evapotranspiration under flooding and dry conditions, and soil water coefficient. The model provided a high predictive accuracy (adjusted R2 1⁄4 0.73e0.83) of monthly water levels when applied to an independent sample of 12 marshes. In a second step we developed an interactive decision-aid tool that allows users to visualize the impact of their management strategy (desired water level at a specific month) on subsequent water levels, and their consequence on different components of the ecosystem over a 10-yr period. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Software availability Software name: Mar-O-Sel Developer: Christophe Germain Year first official release: 2014 Hardware requirements: Any device System requirements: Internet access Software requirements: Internet Browser (tested with Internet Explorer (V 9), Chrome & Firefox Program language: php and MySQL (server side), HTML and JavaScript (user side) Software language: French, English Availability: www.Mar-O-Sel.net License: Free e Open source (code available upon request)