RiverLifeGIS

RiverLifeGIS is a software for hydrological and water quality computations on river basins using geographical information (GI) and monitored water quality data. Originally,it is an outcome of the RiverLife project carried out in Finland in 1998 - 2001 (Lauri & Virtanen 2002). Since then, it has been used and further developed in several planning, research and development projects. RiverLifeGIS offers the possibility to analyse diverse GIS data and visualise results as maps without expensive commercial software. The tool can be downloaded to the users computer. Typically, GIS-data needed include watershed boundaries, watercourses, Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and land use data (Lauri & Virtanen 2002; Rintala et al. 2006).

For example, RiverLifeGIS can be applied for

• estimation of land-derived nutrient loading,
• estimation of changes in nutrient concentrations in water due to the changes in loading,
• estimation of the effects of water pollution control methods on the loading and concentrations on the river basin scale,
• searching suitable locations wetlands constructed on peatland,
• definition of the upper drainage areas for any chosen point, and
• estimation of the erosion sensitivity of ditches.