Effects of human activities on the discharge regimes

Land use activities may affect streamflow through various hydrological processes and pathways. In section 2.7 , historical land use changes and hydraulic activities in the Meuse basin and the selected subcatchments during the 20 th century have been described. This chapter intends to make assessment of their effects on the discharge regimes of the rivers (emphasizing the Meuse river basin). Seven sections are organised. In sections 7.2 to 7.4 , the potential impacts on mean flows, high flows and low flows of the rivers are separately evaluated in a qualitative way based on both the statistical trend results and the HBV-simulated results. The existing knowledge of human impacts on streamflows (see previous section 1.2.2 ) and the results of recent relevant studies mainly restricting to the Meuse basin and the European areas (see sections 7.2.1 , 7.3.1 and 7.4.1 ) provide a sound scientific basis for the evaluation. Section 7.5 makes a synthesized evaluation of the hydrological effects of human activities in the Meuse basin. Finally, section 7.6 presents the concluding remarks and also the suggestion of further researches.