UNESCO-IHP and IAHS organize Symposium on "Water Quality: Current Trends and Expected Climate Change Impacts"

The International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO and the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) jointly organized the Symposium on "Water Quality: Current Trends and Expected Climate Change Impacts" during the XXV IUGG General Assembly "Earth on the Edge: Science for a Sustainable Planet" in Melbourne, Australia, on 4-5 July.

The objective of the Symposium was to bring together scientists from around the world for a dialogue on the evaluation of climate change impacts on a wide range of water quality issues and for sharing research findings in this area with the wider scientific community.

The Symposium attracted many interesting contributions, covering a broad spectrum of water quality issues, in five thematic sessions:

• Seasonality and extreme event effects on water quality
• Effects on groundwater quality
• Climate change and water quality assessment
• Climate change and water temperature
• Climate change and water quality modelling.

The Symposium provided an excellent opportunity for scientific exchange and dialogue on understanding and assessing climate change impacts on water quality. The papers presented in the Symposium have provided valuable scientific information on current trends on water quality changes, their sources and their possible behavior in time and space. Most papers focused on research with local and regional scales with local and short range variations, which may indicate that not much work on climate change impacts on water quality has been done, or the analyses carried out by different groups have not been centered on this perception. The symposium discussions demonstrated interest in further research and study on the subject.

The Symposium concluded that it is time that the international scientific communities in the field of water sciences and hydrology pay special attention on this important area of research, as better understanding of potential impacts of climate change on the quality of water resources will help finding appropriate solutions for adaptation to climate change.

The Symposium is a contribution to the International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO, in particular to IHP-VII Focal Area on "Protecting Water Quality for Sustainable Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction".

UNESCO supported the participation of researchers from developing countries to present their research results in the Symposium by providing travel grants.