A new ‘momentum method’ for the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of Polish rivers

There is a tendency in water management to identify the resources of surface waters with river discharge expressed by the intensity of the flow. However, such an evaluation is insufficient because of the difficulties in the water-economic balancing of the basin resources, since it does not take into account the volume of water contained in the river channel. With heavy pollution of the water flowing in the river channel, this fact may have a considerable influence on the representativity of the balance.The above reasons have become a basis for the introduction of a new measure for the evaluation of pollution resources of flowing water. The quantity of water in motion in a river channel is expressed by the momentum equation.Evaluation of water resources has been carried out for 83 rivers in the Vistula Basin and 52 rivers in the Odra Basin by means of the stream momentum method.