The site dynamics of Corrigiola litoralis (Strapwort) on the Elbe River in Czechia: A combined hydrological and hydrodynamic approach

Abstract

AbstractThis study aims to identify suitable sites for Corrigiola litoralis (Strapwort) using hydrological and hydrodynamic models and geographical information techniques. It was conducted on the lower Elbe River in Czechia for 1981–2020 at six research sites. Hydrological models BILAN, GR4J and TUW were used together with HEC‐RAS hydrodynamic model. In addition to hydrological model simulations, we also used observed flows. We addressed identifying sites suitable for Corrigiola litoralis by introducing conditions reflecting the ecological requirements of this species. We compared the results with the findings recorded in the literature. The accuracy of this approach was 0.750 when the source of hydrological data was the observations, and the accuracy was, on average, 0.776 when using model simulations. The determined size of a suitable area had a significant variance. The closest to the size determined from the observed data were results based on the simulation of the TUW model. The GR4J model and BILAN model overestimated the size of suitable areas. The presented approach proved to be reasonable for modelling spatio‐temporal dynamics of sites suitable for Corrigiola litoralis.