Recent trends in rivers with near-natural flow regime: The case of the river headwaters in Spain

The main objective of this research was to study the streamflow evolution of a representative sample of the Spanish near-natural-regime fluvial system over the last four decades of the 20th century. The focus of this study was on those headwater river basins that, not having been subject to substantial human alteration directly via the flow regime, might still have been affected by changes in land management. A representative sample of 74 rivers was selected and a statistical analysis was performed to detect seasonal and annual trends, and the magnitude of streamflow change. Almost all of the rivers studied experienced reductions in streamflow, and three quarters of them had negative and significant (p