Historic flood events in NE Romania (post-1990)

Abstract

Using open-source satellite imagery like Landsat TM, ETM+ and Sentinel 2 can lead to accurate cartographic products. We mapped flood events from Siret and Prut river basins in the last 30 years based on the availability of Landsat data archive. In this area were recorded historical values in flow rates for the entire Romanian territory: 4650 m³/s on the Siret River in 2005 -the maximum value ever recorded for Romania; 4240 m³/s on the Prut in 2008 -second maximum value recorded for Romania. The most powerful floods that took place in Romania in the last years were in

A Comparative Analysis of Exceptional Flood Events in the Context of Heavy Rains in the Summer of 2010: Siret Basin (NE Romania) Case Study

“…The processed data were transposed into histograms that illustrate the evolution of levels (in the time of floods), including danger levels, the levels before and during the flood, and daily and monthly runoff, as well as the hourly variations of runoff during the flood wave. Field observations and measurements were also conducted in June and July of the year 2010 floods, on the course of the major floodable riverbed of Siret, Suceava, Moldova, Bistrita, Trotus, Tazlau, and so on [4]. In the areas most affected by floods, where field observations were quite difficult to make, aerial photographs were taken using drones.…”

“…Landsat Thematic Mapper (Landsat TM) and Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (Landsat ETM+) multispectral satellite images were analyzed and interpreted using the Land Cover Classification System developed by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO-LCCS). Also, to estimate the areas affected by floods, the Sentinel 2 multi-spectral imagery was used, along with Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data, but only the visible floods with cloud coverage less than 30% were selected [3,4] (Figure 4a,b). …”

“…The largest catchment basin in the Romanian territory, the Siret catchment basin, comprises the Siret River [2,4], and the mountains and plateaus in the catchment area have showed different patterns of precipitation [31]. At the same time, the Siret catchment basin comprises the highest number of dams in Romania [33].…”

“…The months of May-June recorded some of the strongest floods in both central and eastern Europe: Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine, Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Romania, and so on [1][2][3][4]. On the Romanian territory, exceptional floods occurred in the rivers of Siret, Prut, Tisa, Somes, Olt, and Tarnave [3][4][5][6][7]. In Europe, the number of human losses was significant [8]: Poland-25 victims [44], Romania-six victims [3], Slovakia-three victims, Serbia-two victims, Hungary-two victims, and the Czech Republic-two victims ( Figure 1).…”

“…From this perspective, the historic floods, or those that produced important material damage or human losses, are worth underscoring [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. The recent catastrophic floods on the Romanian territory-mostly in the east (Moldova region) [3][4][5][6][7]-motivated scientists to pen scientific works that also dealt with the issue of heavy rains [31][32][33].…”