Assessing the usefulness of the ecohydrological model Waterwijzer Natuur 3.0 in developing an ambition map within the Province of Overijssel

Abstract

The Province of Overijssel has to comply with goals set in the national Natuurnetwerk Nederland project. In order to do so, the province needs a map (ambition map) which indicates how nature can be restored and further developed. A consortium was engaged to develop this ambition for which they decided to use the new ecohydrological model Waterwijzer Natuur 3.0. However, no documentation on the reliability of this model had been released yet and the project provided little time for the project team to assess the usefulness of the Waterwijzer Natuur 3.0. This thesis aims to fill this gap by answering the question how the Waterwijzer Natuur 3.0 can be useful in developing the ambition map. Not only was this relevant for the Province of Overijssel, but ecohydrological science could also profit from this thesis, since a new, easy to use model is being assessed. When Waterwijzer Natuur proves to be a useful model, it can be used in comparable research. The usefulness assessment has been done by performing Landscape Ecological System Analyses (LESAs) in the field and comparing field data with the Waterwijzer Natuur 3.0 results and the input it receives. Results showed that the input data for Waterwijzer Natuur 3.0 was regularly incorrect, often caused by the supply of outdated data. As a result, the quality of the Waterwijzer Natuur 3.0 results was too low to directly use them for defining ambitions for the ambition map. But it was also found that when Waterwijzer Natuur 3.0 input was reasonably correct compared to field data, the predictions from WWN 3.0 were mostly correct as well. Therefore has been concluded that results from WWN 3.0 can be used to support the formulation of ambitions for the ambition map, but only when an expert is assessing these results before formulating the ambitions.