Storminess and Environmental Change

This book describes recent developments in the modeling of hydro-climatological processes in time and space. The topic brings together a wide range of disciplines, such as climatology, hydrology, geomorphology and ecology, with examples of problems and related modeling approaches. Parsimonious hydro-climatological models hold the potential to simulate the combined effects of rainfall intensity and distribution patterns in the absence of precipitation records for short time intervals (e.g. daily to sub-hourly) and over large areas (e.g. regional to continental). In this book, we show how the principle of parsimony can be followed without sacrificing depth in seeking to understand a variety of landscape and surface processes that include hydrologic phenomena. Geographically speaking, the focus of the book is on Mediterranean environments. In this region, which is characterized by a complex morphology, soil erosion by water is a major cause of landscape degradation and the fragility of ecosystems is abundantly documented. By exploring interactions between erosive storms and land with the help of modeling solutions created at a variety of scales, the book investigates in detail the climatic implications for the Mediterranean landscape in an effort to bridge historical and contemporary research, which makes it unique in its approach. The book provides a valuable resource for environmental scientists, while also providing an important basis for graduate and postgraduate students interested in research on hydrological cycles and environmental changes.

Inhalt

Introduction.- Extreme rainfalls in the Mediterranean area.- Rainfalls and storm erosivity.- Finding simplicity in storm erosivity modelling.- Characteristics of flash-flood regimes in the Mediterranean region.- Spatial pattern probabilities exceeding critical threshold of annual mean storm-erosivity in Euro-Mediterranean areas.- Landscape scales of erosive storm hazard across the Mediterranean region.- Monthly erosive storm hazard within river basins of the Campania Region, Southern Italy.- Storm-erosivity modelling for addressing hydrological effectiveness in France.- Modelling long-term storm erosivity time-series: a case study in the Western Swiss Plateau.- Temporal and spatial patterns in designstorm erosivity over Sicily Region.- Historical reconstruction of erosive storms driving damaging hydrological events in the Bonea Basin, Southern Italy.- Triggering conditions and runout simulation of the San Mango sul Calore debris avalanche, Southern Italy.- Climate-scale modelling of rainstorm-induced organic carbon losses in land-soil of Thune Alpine areas, Switzerland.- Hydroclimatological modelling of organic carbon dissolution in Lake Maggiore, Northern Italy.- A digression on the analysis of historical series of daily data for the characterization of precipitation dynamics.- Historical climatology of storm events in the Mediterranean: a case study damaging hydrological events in Calabria, Southern Italy.- Storminess forecast skills in Naples, Southern Italy.