A fuzzy Bayesian approach to flood frequency estimation with imprecise historical information

Current European flood-rich period exceptional compared with past 500 years

There are concerns that recent climate change is altering the frequency and magnitude of river floods in an unprecedented way¹. Historical studies have identified flood-rich periods in the past half millennium in various regions of Europe². However, because of the low temporal resolution of existing datasets and the relatively low number of series, it has remained unclear whether Europe is currently in a flood-rich period from a long-term perspective. Here we analyse how recent decades compare with the flood history of Europe, using a new database composed of more than 100 high-resolution (sub-annual) historical flood series based on documentary evidence covering all major regions of Europe. We show that the past three decades were among the most flood-rich periods in Europe in the past 500 years, and that this period differs from other flood-rich periods in terms of its extent, air temperatures and flood seasonality. We identified nine flood-rich periods and associated regions. Among the periods richest in floods are 1560-1580 (western and central Europe), 1760-1800 (most of Europe), 1840-1870 (western and southern Europe) and 1990-2016 (western and central Europe). In most parts of Europe, previous flood-rich periods occurred during cooler-than-usual phases, but the current flood-rich period has been much warmer. Flood seasonality is also more pronounced in the recent period. For example, during previous flood and interflood periods, 41 per cent and 42 per cent of central European floods occurred in summer, respectively, compared with 55 per cent of floods in the recent period. The exceptional nature of the present-day flood-rich period calls for process-based tools for flood-risk assessment that capture the physical mechanisms involved, and management strategies that can incorporate the recent changes in risk.

Assessing soil erosion risk at national scale in developing countries: The technical challenges, a proposed methodology, and a case history

Through an extensive bibliographic review, this contribution underlines the urgency and challenges to quantify soil erosion rates (ERs) in developing countries. It subsequently elaborates on the combined application of GIS-based RUSLE, generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) principles and sediment delivery ratio functions (SDR) to quantify ERs at country scale for these countries, as they commonly have limited measurements to that purpose. The methodology, termed RUSLE-GGS (RUSLE-GIS-GLUE-SDR) herein, comprises the following sequence: (1) construction of ER samples using RUSLE-GIS based on freely available local/global geoenvironmental observations and field relations, (2) construction of area-specific sediment yield samples utilizing SDR transfer functions, and (3) assessment of the most behavioral samples by means of bias analysis and cross validation. Its application to Peru allows obtaining 5-km resolution ER and potential erosion maps for the years 1990, 2000, and 2010. RUSLE-GGS is highly replicable and could potentially be used as an initial standard and systematic method to estimate ERs in developing countries through the active participation of local scientists. Thus, it potentially can contribute to improve the capacity building in such countries and set an initial frame to compare the evolution of soil erosion in their territories towards attaining Goal 15 of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.