Water

This thematic program provides data on the status, dynamics and health of the aquatic ecosystems of the Doñana Protected Areas. These include inflowing rivers, channels and streams; permanent and temporary lakes; as well as floodplain, brackish and salt marshes.

The ICTS-RBD repository includes data on the following topics:

1. Hydrodynamics: 

1.1. Water depth: Water depth obtained from monthly manual readings of 45 scales in the Doñana marsh area available since 1995. These data are complemented with data from 6 automatic stations that register water depth and salinity since 2005. Summary data are presented below. Request raw data.


Evolution of water depth (height of the water column) over time in 8 different manual scales situated across the Doñana marsh, from November 2014 to June 2015 (left), and one manual scale situated at Santa Olalla lake, from November 2014 to December 2015 (right).

Situation of the six automatic stations recording water depth and salinity (left) and evolution of water depth over time in station N12, from September 2014 to August 2015.

1.2. Inflow and outflow to the marsh: Inflow measurements taken at two automatic stations situated at an inflow restored in 2015 (Caño Travieso) are available online. Request access. These measurements are complemented by inflow data from one automatic station (Arroyo del Partido), available at the SAIH online service of the Guadalquivir River Authority.

Streamflow (daily average, in m3/s) at Arroyo del Partido. Data from CHG’s SAIH.

1.3. Flooding area and hydroperiod in the marsh: Remote-sensing estimates of the flooding area and hydroperiod across the Doñana marshes are available since 1975. They are informed by a Digital Elevation Model based on LIDAR data taken in 2002. An example of these data is provided below. Request raw data (hydroperiod per pixel).

Left: hydroperiod (number of días flooded during 2014-15) in the Doñana marsh. Right: difference between the 2014-15 hydroperiod and the average hydroperiod during the last 40 years (1974-2014).

Total rainfall and mean hydroperiod in the Doñana marsh, from 1974 to 2014.

2. Hydrogeology: Data on groundwater levels of the Almonte-Marismas aquifer are made available in biannual reports by the Guadalquivir River Authority (see reports for 2012-13 and 2014-15). Additional data on groundwater levels, soil humidity and lysimeter radings (precipitation, infiltration and evapotranspiration) taken by the Spanish Geological and Mining Institute (IGME) are available on request.

3. Water quality: Monitoring data includes in situ measurements conductivity, pH, oxygen concentration, chlorophyll concentration, turbidity, nitrate and ammonia; as well as laboratory measurements of seston, chlorophyll concentration, and nutrients (ortoP, nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, total P and total N). Request raw data.

4. Aquatic biota:

4.1. Aquatic plants: Monitoring data include large-scale estimates of total cover of emergent, floating and submerged vegetation; and plot-based estimates of cover per species. See protocols and summary data. Request raw data.

4.2. Amphibians: Amphibian data include estimates of site occupancy and local abundance per species, from two annual surveys (late winter and spring). Summary data are shown below. Request raw data.

Left: Amphibian species richness (number of species per locality; green bars, left axis) and rainfall (cummulative precipitation per September-August hydrological cycle; blue line, right axis) in Doñana from 2002-3 to 2014-5. Right: Prevalence (number of localities in which they were detected) of 11 amphibian species surveyed in the Doñana Protected Area in 2013-4 (blue bars) and 2014-5 (red lines), compared with the average values for 2002-3 (green line). The rightmost bars indicate the number of localities surveyed (“N local muestreadas”).

4.3. Fish and macroinvertebrates: Data include estimates of site occupancy and local abundance per fish species or macroinvertebrate taxa, from two annual surveys (spring and late summer). Request raw data.

4.4. Invasive species: Data collected since 2004 include estimates of site occupancy and local abundance of several invasive species  – including the aquatic fern Azolla filiculoides, the American crayfish (Procambarus clarkii), and several fish like the gambusia (Gambusia holbrooki), carp (Cyprinus carpius), goldfish (Carassius auratus), mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus), black-bass (Micropterus salmoides), black bullhead (Ameiurus melas) and pumpkin fish (Lepomis gibbosus). Request raw data.