Methodology to assess the hydrological impact of weed control practices with a view to management of Mediterranean winegrowing catchments

This paper proposes a methodology to assist water resources managers in assessing the hydrological impact of weed control practices in Mediterranean winegrowing catchments. The methodology is based on a spatial representation of practices and its integration in a distributed hydrologic model. The representation is based on the search for indicators that can be used to attribute a distribution of practices to each hydrological unit of the model and a classification of practices according to their effect on soil surface hydraulic conductivity. The observed diversity is integrated in the hydrologic modelling running an existing physical hydrologic model on an elementary experimental catchment.