Flood Response to Solar Activity in the Tagus Basin (Central Spain) over the Last Millennium

Benito, Gerardo; Díez‐Herrero, Andrés; Villalta, María Fernández de

doi:10.1023/b:clim.0000043334.30365.e0

Cited by 94 publications

(157 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Furthermore, we also recognize that some of the flash flood events (i.e. 1936, 1966, 1973, 1999, and 2005) seen in this study were previously defined in the nearby Sierra de Gredos catchment using dendrogeomorphic techniques , 2011aRuiz-Villanueva et al, 2010) as well as described by different researchers and in archives (Benito et al, 2003;Díez Herrero et al, 2008;Morales and Ortega, 2002;Potenciano, 2004). Our results suggest, moreover, the occurrence of at least eight flash flood events which would not have been recorded previously in the area (i.e.…”

Section: Tablesupporting

confidence: 67%

Regional reconstruction of flash flood history in the Guadarrama range (Central System, Spain)

Rodríguez-Morata

Ballesteros‐Cánovas

Trappmann³

et al. 2016

Science of The Total Environment

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• Flash floods represent a regional natural hazard in Guadarrama range.• Dendrochronology allows fill the lack of systematic data in mountain environments.• Regional studies and quality samples allow reducing the number of collected samples.• We complement existing records with 8 events covering the last~200 years.• Forest management could limit the amount of proxy evidence of flash flood events. Flash floods are a common natural hazard in Mediterranean mountain environments and responsible for serious economic and human disasters. The study of flash flood dynamics and their triggers is a key issue; however, the retrieval of historical data is often limited in mountain regions as a result of short time series and the systematic lack of historical data. In this study, we attempt to overcome data deficiency by supplementing existing records with dendrogeomorphic techniques which were employed in seven mountain streams along the northern slopes of the Guadarrama Mountain range. Here we present results derived from the tree-ring analysis of 117 samples from 63 Pinus sylvestris L. trees injured by flash floods, to complement existing flash flood records covering the last~200 years and comment on their hydro-meteorological triggers. To understand the varying number of reconstructed flash flood events in each of the catchments, we also performed a comparative analysis of geomorphic catchment characteristics, land use evolution and forest management. Furthermore, we discuss the limitations of dendrogeomorphic techniques applied in managed forests. G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o

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Section: Tablesupporting

confidence: 67%

Regional reconstruction of flash flood history in the Guadarrama range (Central System, Spain)

Rodríguez-Morata

Ballesteros‐Cánovas

Trappmann³

et al. 2016

Science of The Total Environment

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“…However, there is a large amount of documentary evidence providing descriptive evidence of past inundation levels and flood damages (impacts) that offer a quantitative reference to the associated flood discharges after a critical analysis and interpretation . For the past 20 years, there has been a growing interest in reconstructing flood chronologies and their discharge estimates from documentary descriptions of flood water level (Benito et al, 2003a). The reconstruction of long historical flood records from documentary sources relies upon the availability of historic data for model implementation and calibration, uncertainty in the past river topography, and detailed configuration of the river channel and vegetation for roughness characterisation.…”

Section: Quantitative Historical Flood Records: Approaches and Methodmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The reconstruction of flood discharges from descriptive flood levels beyond rough extrapolations and estimations (e.g. Schiller, 1987) was addressed firstly for the River Tagus in central Spain (Benito et al, 2003a). Discharges associated with documentary-based floods were reconstructed at four places, namely in Aranjuez (since AD 1557), Toledo (AD 1113), Talavera (AD 1203) and Alcántara (AD 1856).…”

Section: Documentary Data Sources and Typesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most common historical flood discharge calculations are applied to gradually varied flow conditions (Benito et al, 2003a;Lang et al, 2004;Naulet et al, 2005). River channel geometry is generally irregular in shape and surface roughness, resulting in non-uniform flow conditions.…”

Section: Discharge Estimation From Documentary Recordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gradually varied flow analyses usually assume a steady state (constant discharge) for which flow depth varies with distance but not with time (Chow, 1959). The typical approach relating historical flood evidence to discharge uses the step-backwater method for gradually varied water-surface profile computation (Benito et al, 2003a). In this method, water-surface profiles are calculated from the resolution of the conservation of mass and energy equations in their one-dimensional forms.…”

Section: Discharge Estimation From Documentary Recordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Quantitative historical hydrology in Europe

Benito

Brázdil

Herget

et al. 2015

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. In recent decades, the quantification of flood hydrological characteristics (peak discharge, hydrograph shape, and runoff volume) from documentary evidence has gained scientific recognition as a method to lengthen flood records of rare and extreme events. This paper describes the methodological evolution of quantitative historical hydrology under the influence of developments in hydraulics and statistics. In the 19th century, discharge calculations based on flood marks were the only source of hydrological data for engineering design, but were later left aside in favour of systematic gauge records and conventional hydrological procedures. In the last two decades, there has been growing scientific and public interest in understanding long-term patterns of rare floods, in maintaining the flood heritage and memory of extremes, and developing methods for deterministic and statistical application to different scientific and engineering problems. A compilation of 46 case studies across Europe with reconstructed discharges demonstrates that (1) in most cases present flood magnitudes are not unusual within the context of the last millennium, although recent floods may exceed past floods in some temperate European rivers (e.g. the Vltava and Po rivers); (2) the frequency of extreme floods has decreased since the 1950s, although some rivers (e.g. the Gardon and Ouse rivers) show a reactivation of rare events over the last two decades. There is a great potential for gaining understanding of individual extreme events based on a combined multiproxy approach (palaeoflood and documentary records) providing high-resolution time flood series and their environmental and climatic changes; and for developing non-systematic and non-stationary statistical models based on relations of past floods with external and internal covariates under natural low-frequency climate variability.

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Modeling flood dynamics along the superelevated channel belt of the Yellow River over the last 3000 years

et al. 2015

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The Yellow River, China, experienced >1000 levee breaches during the last 3000 years. A reduced-complexity model is developed in this study to explore the effects of climate change and human activity on flood levels, levee breaches, and river avulsions. The model integrates yearly morphological change along a channel belt with daily river fluxes and hourly evolution of levee breaches. Model sensitivity analysis reveals that under natural conditions, superelevation of the channel belt dominates flood frequency. When there is significant human-accelerated basin erosion and breach repair, the dominant factors shift to a combination of mean annual precipitation, superelevation, critical shear stress of weak channel banks, and the time interval between breach initiation and its repair. The effect of precipitation on flood frequency is amplified by land use changes in the hinterland, particularly in the erodible Loess Plateau. Uncertainty analysis estimates the most likely values of the dominant factors for six historical periods between 850 B.C. and A.D. 1839, which are used to quantitatively reconstruct flood dynamics. During 850 B.C. to A.D. 1839, when the sediment load increased fourfold, the breach recurrence interval was shortened from more than 500 years to less than 6 years, and the breach outflow rate increased~27 times. River management practices during A.D. 1579 to A.D. 1839 focused on levees and triggered a severe positive feedback of increased levee heights and flood hazard exacerbation. Raising the levee heights proved to be ineffective for sustainable flood management.

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Flood Response to Solar Activity in the Tagus Basin (Central Spain) over the Last Millennium

Cited by 94 publications

References 2 publications

Regional reconstruction of flash flood history in the Guadarrama range (Central System, Spain)

Regional reconstruction of flash flood history in the Guadarrama range (Central System, Spain)

Quantitative historical hydrology in Europe

Modeling flood dynamics along the superelevated channel belt of the Yellow River over the last 3000 years

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