National‐scale detection of reservoir impacts through hydrological signatures

摘要: Reservoirs play a vital role in the supply and management of water resources and their operation can significantly alter downstream flow. Despite this, reservoirs are frequently excluded or poorly represented in large‐scale hydrological models, which can be partly attributed to a lack of open‐access data describing reservoir operations, inflow and storage. To help inform the development of reservoir operation schemes, we collate a suite of hydrological signatures designed to detect the impacts of reservoirs on the flow regime at large‐scales from downstream flow records only. By removing the need for pre‐and‐post‐reservoir flow timeseries (a requirement of many pre‐existing techniques), these signatures facilitate the assessment of flow alteration across a much wider range of catchments. To demonstrate their application, we calculate the signatures across Great Britain in 111 benchmark (i.e., near‐natural …