Page - 492 - in Book of Full Papers - Symposium Hydro Engineering

ASSESMENT OF OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE AND RISKS CONSIDERING THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE TIBETAN PLATEAU PROF. DR. HELMUT WENZEL Head of the Monitoring and Asset Management Group, VIENNA UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES (BOKU) MR. JIA-XIU YANG Deputy general manager of POWERCHINA GUIYANG ENGINEERING CORPORATION LIMITED MR. JI LU Head of Engineering Safety Research and Development Dept., Science and Technology R & D Center, HUANENG LANCANG RIVER HYDROPOWER INC. PROF. DR. HABIL.. BARBARA THEILEN-WILLIGE Institute of Applied Geosciences, TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY BERLIN (TUB) AUSTRIA, CHINA, GERMANY 1. INTRODUCTION Reservoirs in mountainous regions are built for many generations to come. Climate change will definitely be a factor of decisive order. In consequence assessing performance and risk of a hydropower plant, it becomes necessary to quantify the impact of climate change. A methodology is proposed which allows the mathematical formulation of changes of performance over time. 2. QUANTIFICATION OF PAST CHANGES AND PREDICITIONS The archives of LANDSAT, IKONOS, Sentinel and RapidEye images cover a period of 40 years. In case that sufficient satellite images are available, changes within that period can be identified. The following phenomena have been studied:  Retreat of glaciers and related changes in the creeks  Indicators for the change in permafrost expressed in debris flow starting at higher elevations  Changes in shape and volume of natural lakes and ponds  Changes in vegetation, particularly the lower and upper tree lines  Changes in vegetation density and character 492