It is vital to provide useful hydrological forecasts for urban and agricultural water management, hydropower generation, flood protection and management, drought mitigation and alleviation, and river basin planning and management, among other things. This paper introduces a simple and flexible hydrological time series forecasting framework. Predicting water levels is crucial, given the need for sustainable environmental management. The prognosis should be reasonable to persuade individuals to take proper precautions. While many methods have been developed to predict water levels, here the effectiveness of two approaches to predicting river water levels was assessed. For this purpose, nine years of data were used, which were divided into input data (2014–2021) and validation data (2022), on water levels in the Morava e Binçës river for the Vitia station, in the form of monthly time series records, to identify the best model among those used and to identify the information necessary for water resource management and hazard control. Models Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average(ARIMA) and Error Trend and Seasonality, or Exponential Smoothing (ETS), were examined using the R package to determine the most accurate. The results indicate the applicability of both models, as evidenced by the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and the Mean Absolute Error (MAE). The predictive analysis based on historical water levels allowed the identification of distinct periods characterized by high and low water levels between 2022 and 2024, which is important for the area in question due to the numerous flood events occurring here.

Floods are among the most devastating natural disasters in small suburban catchments. These phenomena, causing loss of life and massive property damage, pose a serious threat to the economy. Hydrological modeling is extremely important in terms of climate change, and the use of appropriate modeling can be a useful tool for flood risk prevention and mitigation. Rainfall–runoff modeling requires the selection of an appropriate hydrological model in order to obtain satisfactory results. Hydrological models are used in water resource planning and management to estimate catchment runoff. Small uncontrolled catchments play a particularly important role in hydrological phenomena, since changes in them affect flows in the recipient. Hydrologists are particularly interested in developing hydrological models that can be made with a minimum of data and parameters. Nash models and the Hydrologic Engineering Center-Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) are examples of simple and most practical hydrologic models. These models were used in this paper to study geographic and qualitative changes in precipitation runoff due to land cover changes. The modeling was carried out for two spatial aspects relating to the years 1940 and 2018. The model allowed for the simulation of the river flow that can occur under different rainfall probabilities. The analysis of the results was used to evaluate the hydrological models used. The hundred-year flow modeled with the Nash model for 1940 was 13.4 m³∙s⁻¹, whereas the second model gave slightly lower flow values. In addition, modeling the flow for 2018 (after changing the land cover) highlighted the increase in the flow value for both models, where again the flow volume was slightly higher for the Nash model and amounted to about 19 m³∙s⁻¹. The flow differences for individual models were not too large. This made it possible to conclude that the simulated outflow hydrographs are in good agreement, and this means that the models accurately reproduce the flow of the Michałówka River. The study showed that rapid urbanization adversely affects hydrological processes. In addition, the study showed that a well-distributed model can outperform a global flood forecasting model, especially in terms of magnitude, as in the current study example.

The study aims to analyze the availability of renewable freshwater resources and their spatiotemporal distribution in the Eastern Region of Kosovo (ERK). As a crucible resource for agricultural, industrial, and commercial activities, water scarcity will lead to water shortages. Kosovo is a landlocked country, and ERK is the most important region for industrial activities (coal, mines) and agricultural use (plains). Located in continental climate conditions, surrounded by middle to high-altitude mountains, the region does not have a favorable spatio-temporal distribution of freshwaters. The determination of the water resources is based on the amount of surface runoff, which being divided per capita, gives indications of the water resources of a region (catchment). For our aims, main river discharge and population statistics are used to analyze the spatiotemporal distribution and availability of renewable freshwater in ERK. Falkenmark Freshwater Indicator with 1.483 m³/capita/year shows that ERK lies under water scarcity, and existing water reservoirs offer low security for water withdrawals, and further reservoirs would prevent water scarcity in the region.

Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) are the main components that indicate the coverage of land and its use. Kosova Plain, a flat and gentle plain with an altitude between 450-600 m, is one of the central plains in Kosova, where the human impact and environmental changes are very high. As a terrain with land with high-quality soils, it was one of the main areas of agricultural production in the past. With the industrialization of Kosova especially with coal surface mining, began an era of employment in other sectors rather than in agriculture, and its consequences were population migration inside Kosova, which is shown by the rising urban population and extension of artificial surfaces towards agricultural areas. Population migration inside Kosova is made mostly towards plain areas where most of the settlements are found, but also where high capability land is found. The article analyzes natural conditions of agricultural land in Kosova Plain and spatial and temporal changes in land cover as one of the consequences of pressure on the environment, especially in soil resources, where with GIS/RS analysis was made possible to use topographic maps and aerial images of different years, to analysis these changes. In 1990, the total area of artificial surfaces in Kosova Plain was 7,157 ha, while in 2020, it was increased to 15,881 hectares. There is an increase of artificial surfaces in urban fabric, mineral extraction sites, and road infrastructure, mostly done on agricultural land. Agriculture areas experienced a decrease of 8.76%. The extension of artificial surfaces was primarily made in an unplanned way. The results show that in the future, zoning of built-up areas is needed.