ASSESSMENT OF THE ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUITABILITY OF THE JIU-CORABIA ENCLOSURE FOR LAKE USAGE USING GIS TECHNIQUES

Abstract

One of the three strategic objectives of the Europe 2020 Agenda is to ensure the sustainable management of the natural resources and to fight against climate changes. Considering water to be not only a valuable natural resource for any type of landscape, but also the vital environmental component that ensured a minimum of productivity for the people working the unproductive salinization and gleyzation affected soils in the Jiu-Corabia enclosure, using embankment dams to breake the link between the Danube and the flood organism it created over a timespan of millenia has proven in the last 50 years to be an economic and ecological failure. Since the December 1989 events in Romania, after most of the socialist institutions have proven to be too resource consuming, thus unprofitable or maladaptive, the Jiu-Corabia locals have individually experimented with various land cultivation patterns, all of them based on draught-resistant crops, such as peanuts. In spite of it being the original natural landuse, lake usage has only been scarcely mentioned as a project after the 2006 flood, but after being institutionally rejected, its benefits in terms of ecological restoration, financial productivity have not been further looked into. The current article aims to identify different height level scenarios of lake usage in the Jiu-Corabia enclosure, using GIS technique. Lake volumes are calculated for each scenario with the aim of assessing the volume of water this enclose can absorb during flooding periods, as well as of estimating fish production for when the waters are low and it is not needed as a controlled flood chamber. Other benefits, such as providing a source of humidity for precipitations which will aid the crops nearby, have not been monetized, but contribute to the regional development efforts.