scholarly journals The role of catastrophic floods in shaping the morphology of river beds in small mountain catchment areas

2017 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-38
Author(s):  
Paweł Franczak

Abstract Mountain streams are subjected to the continuous reshaping of their river beds during floods, with the greatest changes occurring during extreme floods caused by sudden and heavy rainfall. River bed transformations during these flash floods are more severe in forested areas, where wooden logs carried by swollen streams are more likely to be deposited on the ground, which in turn leads to the greater accumulation of other transported material and debris. The study was conducted in the Rybny Potok catchment area (Babia Góra National Park). An extreme flash flood occurred on 15–16 May 2014 because of heavy rainfall, which, on 15 May amounted to 138 mm. The total amount of precipitation in the catchment area was 216.5 mm in three days. This resulted in sudden and full streams in spate, contributing to significant geomorphological transformations reaching all the way to the bottom of the river beds. During the flash flood, already established river beds and streams increased in size and many new river courses were formed.

Author(s):  
Paweł Franczak

<p>Mountain streams are subject to continuous modeling of river beds during floods. The greatest changes occur within them, however, during the catastrophic floods caused by sudden rainfall. The increase in the intensity of transformation occurs in forest areas, where the wooden logs carried by the swollen streams create a dumping ground, around which there is a greater accumulation of transported material and the formation of an increased mosaic of geomorphological forms.</p><p>The study was conducted in the Rybny Potok catchment area (Babia Góra National Park). The flooding occurred on 15–16 May 2014 due to the heavy rainfall, which on 15 May amounted to 138 mm. Whereas 216.5 mm of rainfall fell in the catchment area in three days. This resulted in a sudden and full spate streams, contributing to a significant transformation in the bottoms of their geomorphological valleys. There were created many new forms, while the pre-existing increased their size.</p>


1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (3-5) ◽  
pp. 101-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. v. d. Emde ◽  
H. Fleckseder ◽  
N. Matsché ◽  
F. Plahl-Wabnegg ◽  
G. Spatzierer ◽  
...  

Neusiedlersee (in German) / Fertö tó (in Hungarian) is a shallow lake at the Austro-Hungarian border. In the late 1970s, the question arose what to do in order to protect the lake against eutrophication. A preliminary report established the need for point-source control as well as gave first estimates for non-point source inputs. The proposed point-source control was quickly implemented, non-point sources were - among other topics - studied in detail in the period 1982 - 1986. The preliminary work had shown, based on integrated sampling and data from literature, that the aeolic input outweighed the one via water erosion (work was for totP only). In contrast to this, the 1982 - 1986 study showed that (a) water erosion by far dominates over aeolic inputs and (b) the size of nonpoint-source inputs was assessed for the largest catchment area in pronounced detail, whereas additional estimates were undertaken for smaller additional catchment areas. The methods as well as the results are presented in the following. The paper concludes with some remarks on the present management practice of nonpoint-source inputs.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 1787
Author(s):  
Leena J. Shevade ◽  
Franco A. Montalto

Green infrastructure (GI) is viewed as a sustainable approach to stormwater management that is being rapidly implemented, outpacing the ability of researchers to compare the effectiveness of alternate design configurations. This paper investigated inflow data collected at four GI inlets. The performance of these four GI inlets, all of which were engineered with the same inlet lengths and shapes, was evaluated through field monitoring. A forensic interpretation of the observed inlet performance was conducted using conclusions regarding the role of inlet clogging and inflow rate as described in the previously published work. The mean inlet efficiency (meanPE), which represents the percentage of tributary area runoff that enters the inlet was 65% for the Nashville inlet, while at Happyland the NW inlet averaged 30%, the SW inlet 25%, and the SE inlet 10%, considering all recorded events during the monitoring periods. The analysis suggests that inlet clogging was the main reason for lower inlet efficiency at the SW and NW inlets, while for the SE inlet, performance was compromised by a reverse cross slope of the street. Spatial variability of rainfall, measurement uncertainty, uncertain tributary catchment area, and inlet depression characteristics are also correlated with inlet PE. The research suggests that placement of monitoring sensors should consider low flow conditions and a strategy to measure them. Additional research on the role of various maintenance protocols in inlet hydraulics is recommended.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1122
Author(s):  
Monica Ionita ◽  
Viorica Nagavciuc

The role of the large-scale atmospheric circulation in producing heavy rainfall events and floods in the eastern part of Europe, with a special focus on the Siret and Prut catchment areas (Romania), is analyzed in this study. Moreover, a detailed analysis of the socio-economic impacts of the most extreme flood events (e.g., July 2008, June–July 2010, and June 2020) is given. Analysis of the largest flood events indicates that the flood peaks have been preceded up to 6 days in advance by intrusions of high Potential Vorticity (PV) anomalies toward the southeastern part of Europe, persistent cut-off lows over the analyzed region, and increased water vapor transport over the catchment areas of Siret and Prut Rivers. The vertically integrated water vapor transport prior to the flood peak exceeds 300 kg m−1 s−1, leading to heavy rainfall events. We also show that the implementation of the Flood Management Plan in Romania had positive results during the 2020 flood event compared with the other flood events, when the authorities took several precaution measurements that mitigated in a better way the socio-economic impact and risks of the flood event. The results presented in this study offer new insights regarding the importance of large-scale atmospheric circulation and water vapor transport as drivers of extreme flooding in the eastern part of Europe and could lead to a better flood forecast and flood risk management.


Author(s):  
Claudia Prieto-Latorre ◽  
Oscar D. Marcenaro-Gutierrez ◽  
Luis Alejandro Lopez-Agudo

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Onuchin ◽  
Т. Burenina ◽  
А. Shvidenko ◽  
D. Prysov ◽  
A. Musokhranova

Abstract Background Assessment of the reasons for the ambiguous influence of forests on the structure of the water balance is the subject of heated debate among forest hydrologists. Influencing the components of total evaporation, forest vegetation makes a significant contribution to the process of runoff formation, but this process has specific features in different geographical zones. The issues of the influence of forest vegetation on river runoff in the zonal aspect have not been sufficiently studied. Results Based on the analysis of the dependence of river runoff on forest cover, using the example of nine catchments located in the forest-tundra, northern and middle taiga of Northern Eurasia, it is shown that the share of forest cover in the total catchment area (percentage of forest cover, FCP) has different effects on runoff formation. Numerical experiments with the developed empirical models have shown that an increase in forest cover in the catchment area in northern latitudes contributes to an increase in runoff, while in the southern direction (in the middle taiga) extensive woody cover of catchments “works” to reduce runoff. The effectiveness of geographical zonality in regards to the influence of forests on runoff is more pronounced in the forest-tundra zone than in the zones of northern and middle taiga. Conclusion The study of this problem allowed us to analyze various aspects of the hydrological role of forests, and to show that forest ecosystems, depending on environmental conditions and the spatial distribution of forest cover, can transform water regimes in different ways. Despite the fact that the process of river runoff formation is controlled by many factors, such as temperature conditions, precipitation regime, geomorphology and the presence of permafrost, the models obtained allow us to reveal general trends in the dependence of the annual river runoff on the percentage of forest cover, at the level of catchments. The results obtained are consistent with the concept of geographic determinism, which explains the contradictions that exist in assessing the hydrological role of forests in various geographical and climatic conditions. The results of the study may serve as the basis for regulation of the forest cover of northern Eurasian river basins in order to obtain the desired hydrological effect depending on environmental and economic conditions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 125 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
P V Rajesh ◽  
S Pattnaik ◽  
D Rai ◽  
K K Osuri ◽  
U C Mohanty ◽  
...  

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