In Alpine regions, water resources data are more and more commonly created and monitored. However, direct, quantitative and long term measurements of water uses are rare.

This lack of data on the actual state of the water uses system highlights the need of a quantification and monitoring of uses, especially for the case of mountainous, highly developped watersheds, where uses conflicts may occur.

This project will be divided in three steps:

(1) A conceptual part, clarifying the vocabulary associated to water uses and addressing the issue of their spatial and temporal scales, when incorporated in systemic analysis;

(2) An empirical part, where two case studies are analysed: the alpine tourist resorts of Megève (France) and Crans-Montana (Switzerland). There, direct, continuous and fine grained measurement will be made on a sample of two typical uses: irrigation and drinkable water. This will improve the knowledge in the dynamics of theses uses, and it will also help to evaluate indirect measurements often used.

(3) A more practical part consisting in the elaboration of a monitoring methodology, able to give a global overview of water uses in an alpine territory.

Project location