Exploiting historical rainfall and landslide data in a spatial database for the derivation of critical rainfall thresholds

Critical rainfall thresholds for landslides are powerful tools for preventing landslide hazard. The thresholds are commonly estimated empirically starting from rainfall events that triggered landslides in the past. The creation of the appropriate rainfall–landslide database is one of the main efforts in this approach. In fact, an accurate agreement between the landslide and rainfall information, in terms of location and timing, is essential in order to correctly estimate the rainfall–landslide relationships. A further issue is taking into account the average moisture conditions prior the triggering event, which reasonably may be crucial in determining the sufficient amount of precipitation.…

Geostatistical techniques for runoff mapping: an application to Sicily, Italy

The availability of reliable and long time series of runoff data is fundamental for most of the hydrological analyses and for the assessment and the management of water resources even in condition of global climatic change. However, hydrologic data sets are often characterized by a short duration and also suffer from missing data values, mainly due to malfunctioning of gauging stations for a specific period. In order to overcome this problem and obtain long and continuous runoff time series, different models and methods have been previously developed and proposed. While some models, used to extent the streamflow record, are conceptual, empirical, regressive models based on the rainfall inpu…

Extreme rainfall changes induced by future climate in Mediterranean area

Extreme rainfall events have large impacts on society and are likely to continue to do so under predicted future climate change. Indeed, extreme precipitations show intensification in many regions of the world and this is of key importance to society as a result of the large impact of flooding. Thus, for planning and management decisions of the hydraulic infrastructures, accurate estimates of precipitation magnitudes at different durations are needed. Moreover, extreme precipitation events represent an increasing threat to society under global warming and are among the most serious challenges. In fact, future climate change is likely to lead to the change of extremes events that will become…

Modeling the shrub and juniper encroachment in the western north America grasslands with a Cellular Automata model

Derivation of critical rainfall thresholds for landslide in Sicily

Rainfall is the primary trigger of shallow landslides that can cause fatalities, damage to properties and economic losses in many areas of the world. For this reason, determining the rainfall amount/intensity responsible for landslide occurrence is important, and may contribute to mitigate the related risk and save lives. Efforts have been made in different countries to investigate triggering conditions in order to define landslide-triggering rainfall thresholds. The rainfall thresholds are generally described by a functional relationship of power in terms of cumulated or intensity event rainfall-duration, whose parameters are estimated empirically from the analysis of historical rainfall e…

Climate change effects on the hydrological regime of small non-perennial river basins.

Recent years have been witnessing an increasing interest on global climate change and, although we are only at the first stage of the projected trends, some signals of climate alteration are already visible. Climate change encompasses modifications in the characteristics of several interrelated climate variables, and unavoidably produces relevant effects on almost all the natural processes related to the hydrological cycle. This study focuses on potential impacts of climate variations on the streamflow regime of small river basins in Mediterranean, seasonally dry, regions. The paper provides a quantitative evaluation of potential modifications in the flow duration curves (FDCs) and in the p…

Olive Yield and Future Climate Forcings

Abstract The rainfall reduction and the temperature increase forecasted for Mediterranean regions would likely increase the vegetation water stress and decrease productivity in rainfed agriculture. Olive trees, which have traditionally been grown under rainfed conditions, are one of the most characteristic tree crops from the Mediterranean not only for economical importance but also for minimizing erosion and desertification and for improving the carbon balance of these areas. In order to simulate how climatic change could alter soil moisture dynamics, biomass growth and fruit productivity, a water driven crop model is used in this study. The model quantitatively links olive yield to climat…

An Ecohydrological Cellular Automata Model Investigation of Juniper Tree Encroachment in a Western North American Landscape

Woody plant encroachment over the past 140 years has substantially changed grasslands in western North American. We studied encroachment of western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis var. occidentalis) into a previously mixed shrub–grassland site in central Oregon (USA) using a modified version of Cellular Automata Tree–Grass–Shrub Simulator (CATGraSS) ecohydrological model. We developed simple algorithms to simulate three encroachment factors (grazing, fire frequency reduction, and seed dispersal by herbivores) in CATGraSS. Local ecohydrological dynamics represented by the model were first evaluated using satellite-derived leaf area index and measured evapotranspiration data. Reconstruc…

Climate change and Ecotone boundaries: Insights from a cellular automata ecohydrology model in a Mediterranean catchment with topography controlled vegetation patterns

Abstract Regions of vegetation transitions (ecotones) are known to be highly sensitive to climate fluctuations. In this study, the Cellular-Automata Tree Grass Shrub Simulator (CATGraSS) has been modified, calibrated and used with downscaled future climate scenarios to examine the role of climate change on vegetation patterns in a steep mountainous catchment (1.3 km2) located in Sicily, Italy. In the catchment, north-facing slopes are mostly covered by trees and grass, and south-facing slopes by Indian Fig opuntia and grass, with grasses dominating as elevation grows. CATGraSS simulates solar radiation, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture in space and time. Each model cell can hold a sing…

Modeling the shrub encroachment in the Northern Chihuahuan desert Grasslands using a Cellular Automata model

Mechanisms of shrub encroachment into Northern Chihuahuan Desert grasslands and impacts of climate change investigated using a cellular automata model

Arid and semiarid grasslands of southwestern North America have changed dramatically over the last 150 years as a result of woody plant encroachment. Overgrazing, reduced fire frequency, and climate change are known drivers of woody plant encroachment into grasslands. In this study, relatively sim- ple algorithms for encroachment factors (i.e., grazing, grassland fires, and seed dispersal by grazers) are proposed and implemented in the ecohydrological Cellular-Automata Tree Grass Shrub Simulator (CAT- GraSS). CATGraSS is used in a 7.3 km 2 rectangular domain located in central New Mexico along a zone of grassland to shrubland transition, where shrub encroachment is currently active. CATGraS…

MODELING THE INFLUENCE OF THE CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE VEGETATION PATTERN VARIATION USING A CELLULAR AUTOMATA MODEL

Hydrological and mechanical effects of roots in shallow landslide analysis: A physically-based approach

This study provides the first insights of a methodology for estimating the additional cohesion exercised by vegetation roots in a hillslope landslide analysis within a coupled ecohydrological-stability model. The existing coupled system is able to simulate the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of Factor of Safety (FS) as a function of soil moisture dynamics. The model takes into account the hydrological effects of vegetation which, through the root water uptaking, contributes in reducing the soil water content and, thus, in increasing the slope stability. The additional mechanical root cohesion is estimated in a Fiber Bundle Model (FBM) framework that allows for the evaluation of t…

Future Climate Forcings and Olive Yield in a Mediterranean Orchard

The olive tree is one of the most characteristic rainfed trees in the Mediterranean region. Observed and forecasted climate modifications in this region, such as the CO2 concentration and temperature increase and the net radiation, rainfall and wind speed decrease, will likely alter vegetation water stress and modify productivity. In order to simulate how climatic change could alter soil moisture dynamic, biomass growth and fruit productivity, a water-driven crop model has been used in this study. The numerical model, previously calibrated on an olive orchard located in Sicily (Italy) with a satisfactory reproduction of historical olive yield data, has been forced with future climate scenar…

Performances of GPM satellite precipitation over the two major Mediterranean islands

Reliable and accurate precipitation measurement or estimation is crucial for disaster monitoring and water resource management. However, obtaining accurate high-resolution precipitation fields is still a challenging task for scientists and practitioners, especially in the poorer region of the world. Nowadays the scientific community expects significant improvements in precipitation monitoring by the continuous technological evolution of satellite-rainfall estimate systems which are able to produce data with global coverage and thus can provide low-cost information even in scarcely populated areas or places where for economic reasons ground measures are missing. The most recent satellite mis…

Analisi della affidabilità dei database pluviometrici globali a scala locale. Applicazione al territorio siciliano

Negli ultimi anni i sistemi di misurazione e di stima delle precipitazioni, sono stati arricchiti dalla possibilità di ottenere stime attraverso dati acquisiti da sensori satellitari. I prodotti di stima così ottenuti risultano comunque spesso fortemente distorti. Per tale ragione le stime sulla base di soli dati satellitari, vengono ulteriormente elaborate attraverso l'utilizzo di dataset che raccolgono dati di precipitazione provenienti da reti pluviografiche al fine di ridurre la distorsione che caratterizza i dati satellitari. È auspicabile che questi dataset siano quanto più precisi al fine di fornire dati adatti alla correzione dei dati satellitari e in particolare alla riduzione dell…

Detecting hydrological changes through conceptual model

Natural changes and human modifications in hydrological systems coevolve and interact in a coupled and interlinked way. If, on one hand, climatic changes are stochastic, non-steady, and affect the hydrological systems, on the other hand, human-induced changes due to over-exploitation of soils and water resources modifies the natural landscape, water fluxes and its partitioning. Indeed, the traditional assumption of static systems in hydrological analysis, which has been adopted for long time, fails whenever transient climatic conditions and/or land use changes occur. Time series analysis is a way to explore environmental changes together with societal changes; unfortunately, the not disting…

Derivation of critical rainfall thresholds for landslide

Rainfall is the primary trigger of shallow landslides that can cause fatalities and economic losses in many areas of the world. For this reason, determining the rainfall amount responsible for landslide occurrence is important, and may contribute to mitigate the related risk. In particular, the definition of critical rainfall-triggering thresholds for landslide is one of the most used approach, which is based on empirical methods. The creation of the rainfall-landslide database represents one of the main efforts in this kind of analysis, which requires a perfect agreement between the rainfall and landslide information in terms of timing. This requirement is easily obtained in the case of th…

Assessing the hydrological changes due to land use alterations

The increase of urbanized areas and, consequently, of the impervious surfaces in land-use distributions may have important implications on the basin hydrological response. As a direct impact, the increase of cemented areas reduces the available storage volume for water in the watershed, which in turn exacerbates the runoff generation. Additionally, drainage pathways can be altered and the travel time to the watershed outlet considerably speeded up, with impacts on the hydrograph characteristics. The complex interactions among different hydrological processes make the estimations of the hydrological changes highly non linear. The aim of this work is using an advanced physically-based and dis…

Co-evolution of hydrological components under climate change scenarios in the Mediterranean area

ABSTRACT The Mediterranean area is historically characterized by high human pressure on water resources. Today, while climate is projected to be modified in the future, through precipitation decrease and temperature increase, that jointly and non-linearly may affect runoff, concerns about water availability are increasing. For these reasons, quantitative assessment of future modifications in the mean annual water availability are important; likewise, the description of the future interannual variability of some hydrological components such as runoff and evapotranspiration are highly wished for water management and ecosystems dynamics analyses. This study investigates at basin spatial scale …

Potential implications of climate change and urbanization on watershed hydrology

Abstract This paper proposes a modeling framework able to analyze the alterations in watershed hydrology induced by two recurrent drivers for hydrological changes: climate change and urbanization. The procedure is based on the coupling of a stochastic weather generator with a land use change model for the generation of some hypothetical scenarios. The generated scenarios are successively used to force a physically-based and spatial distributed hydrological model to reconstruct the basin response under different conditions. Several potential climate alterations are simulated by imposing negative and positive variations in the mean annual precipitation and a simultaneous temperature increase.…

Ricostruzione delle curve di durata mediante un nuovo approccio ecoidrologico

Le curve di durata delle portate forniscono un importante sintesi dei processi idrologici più rilevanti occorrenti a scala di bacino. Sebbene vengano tipicamente ottenute a partire dalle osservazioni idrometriche, uno dei temi più rilevanti in idrologia è proprio la loro ricostruzione anche in bacini non strumentati. A tal proposito sono stati sviluppati negli ultimi anni svariati approcci teorici, alcuni dei quali meritano particolare attenzione per la loro semplicità di applicazione e accuratezza dei risultati mostrati. La curva di durata viene spesso disaggregata in due componenti: una componente veloce di deflusso superficiale ed una componente lenta di deflusso subsuperficiale. Un rece…

Modelling the shrub encroachment in a grassland with a Cellular Automata Model

Abstract. Arid and semi-arid grasslands of southwestern North America have changed dramatically over the last 150 years as a result of shrub encroachment, i.e. the increase in density, cover and biomass of indigenous shrubby plants in grasslands. Numerous studies have documented the expansion of shrublands in the southwestern American grasslands; in particular shrub encroachment has occurred strongly in part of the northern Chihuahuan desert since 1860. This encroachment has been simulated using an ecohydrological Cellular Automata model, CATGraSS. It is a spatially distributed model driven by spatially explicit irradiance and runs on a fine-resolution gridded domain. Plant competition is m…

Modeling the juniper encroachment in the western north America grasslands with a Cellular Automata model

Modeling the role of climate change on small-scale vegetation patterns in a Mediterranean basin using a Cellular Automata model

Predicting vegetation response in regions of ecotone transition under a changing climate is a among grand challenges in ecohydrology. In a small basin (1.3 sq km) in Sicily, Italy, where north-facing slopes are characterized by Quercus (tree), and south-facing slopes by Opuntia ficus-indaca (evergreen perennial species drought tolerant) and grasses we use an ecohydrological Cellular-Automaton model (CATGraSS) of vegetation coexistence driven by rainfall and solar radiation with downscaled future climate to examine the role of climate change on vegetation patterns. In the model, each cell can hold a single plant type or can be bare soil. Plant competition is modeled explicitly by keeping tra…

L’INFLUENZA DELLA MORFOLOGIA SULLA DISTRIBUZIONE DELLE PIOGGE INTENSE

Le precipitazioni intense costituiscono uno dei principali pericoli naturali perché sono all’origine di processi, come innesco di frane o piene improvvise, che possono rappresentare una grave minaccia per la vita umana. Il problema di determinare la variazione spaziale delle precipitazioni intense e in particolare, di indagare sulle relazioni che intercorrono tra queste e la morfologia del territorio, è molto importante soprattutto per gli studi connessi alla realizzazione di efficienti sistemi di allerta e di allarme. Tuttavia la variabilità delle piogge intense con la morfologia è scarsamente studiata in idrologia. In questo lavoro si intende affrontare l’argomento a scala regionale, assu…

Modeling the hydrological and mechanical effect of roots in shallow landslide analysis

The additional cohesion exercised by vegetation roots (cr) provides an important contribution to the slope stability. This study proposes a methodology for estimating the cr term in a hillslope landslide analysis within a coupled ecohydrological-stability model. The coupled model simulates the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of the Factor of Safety (FS) as a function of soil moisture dynamics, by taking into account the hydrological effects of vegetation through the root water uptaking. The additional mechanical root cohesion is estimated in a Fiber Bundle Model framework that allows for the evaluation of the root strength as a function of stress-strain relationships of populatio…

Hydrological regime modifications induced by climate change in Mediterranean area

The knowledge of river flow regimes has a capital importance for a variety of practical applications, in water resource management, including optimal and sustainable use. Hydrological regime is highly dependent on climatic factors, among which the most important is surely the precipitation, in terms of frequency, seasonal distribution and intensity of rainfall events. The streamflow frequency regime of river basins are often summarized by flow duration curves (FDCs), that offer a simple and comprehensive graphical view of the overall historical variability associated with streamflow, and characterize the ability of the basin to provide flows of various magnitudes. Climate change is likely t…

Modifications in Water Resources Availability Under Climate Changes: A Case Study in a Sicilian Basin

Climate variability due to the greenhouse effect has important implications on hydrological processes and water resources systems. Indeed, water availability, quality and streamflow are very sensitive to changes in temperature and precipitation regimes whose effects have to be fully considered in current water management and planning. International literature proposes several models, attempting to assess accurately the available water resources under stationary and changing climatic conditions at different spatial and temporal scales. In order to assess the potential impacts of climate change on surface and groundwater resources water availability in a Southern area of Italy, a conceptual h…

Modeling the past and future dynamic of the vegetation patterns at catchment scale using an ecohydrological Cellular Automata model

Annual runoff assessment in arid Mediterranean watersheds under the Budyko framework

The solution of many practical water problems is strictly connected to the availability of reliable and widespread information about runoff. The estimation of mean annual runoff and its interannual variability for any basin over a wide region, even if ungauged, would be fundamental for both water resources assessment and planning and for water quality analysis. Starting from these premises, the main aim of this work is to show how using the Budyko framework is possible to map the mean annual surface runoff and derive the pdf of the same variable in arid watersheds. As a case study, the entire island of Sicily, Italy, is here proposed. First, time series data of annual rainfall, runoff and r…

Budyko’s Based Method for Annual Runoff Characterization across Different Climatic Areas: an Application to United States

Runoff data knowledge is of fundamental importance for a wide range of hydrological, ecological, and socioeconomic applications. The reconstruction of annual runoff is a fundamental task for several activities related to water resources management, especially for ungauged basins. At catchment scales, the Budyko's framework provides an extremely useful and, in some cases, accurate estimation of the long-term partitioning of precipitation into evapotranspiration and runoff as a function of the prevailing climatic conditions. Recently the same long-term partitioning rules have been successfully used to describe water partitioning also at the annual scale and calculate the annual runoff distrib…

Mapping the annual runoff data in Sicily using a geostatistical approach

The availability of reliable and long time series of runoff data is fundamental for most of the hydrological analyses and for the assessment and the management of water resources even in condition of global climatic change. However, hydrologic data set are often characterized by a short duration and also suffer from missing data values, mainly due to malfunctioning of gauging stations for a specific period. In order to overcome this problem and obtain long and continuous runoff time series, different models and methods have been previously developed and proposed. While some models, used to extent the streamflow record, are conceptual, empirical, regressive models based on the rainfall input…

Derivation of Rainfall Thresholds for Flash Flood Warning in a Sicilian Basin Using a Hydrological Model

Abstract The damages caused by flash floods are among the most onerous in terms of loss of lives and damage to properties. Derivation of rainfall threshold is one of the approaches commonly used for the development of flash flood warning systems. Specifically, rainfall threshold is the rainfall amount that, for a given basin area and duration, is enough to cause flooding and, therefore, it indicates the maximal sustainable rainfall for a basin. The aim of this paper is deriving flash flood-rainfall thresholds for a Sicilian basin (Italy) throughout a deterministic approach. The conceptual hydrological model TOPDM was used to estimate the amount of rainfall that, for given duration, hydrolog…

Influence of spatial precipitation sampling on hydrological response at catchment scale

Retrieving precipitation data from raingauge network is a classical and common practice in hydrology and climatology. These data represent the key input in hydrological modeling to reproduce, for example, the characteristics of a flood phenomenon. The accuracy of the model results is strongly dependent on the consistency of the monitoring network in terms of spatial scale, i.e. network density and location of raingauges, and time resolution. In this context, several studies have been carried out to analyze how the rainfall sampling influences the estimation of total runoff volume. The aim of this paper is to use a physically based and distributed-parameter hydrologic model to investigate ho…

Annual runoff assessment in arid and semiarid Mediterranean watersheds under the Budyko's framework

The solution of many practical water problems is strictly connected to the availability of reliable and widespread information about runoff. The estimation of mean annual runoff and its interannual variability for any basin over a wide region, even if ungauged, would be fundamental for both water resources assessment and planning and for water quality analysis. Starting from these premises, the main aim of this work is to show a new approach, based on the Budyko's framework, for mapping the mean annual surface runoff and deriving the probability distribution of the annual runoff in arid and semiarid watersheds. As a case study, the entire island of Sicily, Italy, is here proposed. First, ti…

Effetti di urbanizzazione e cambiamenti climatici sui deflussi a scala di bacino

Fra le pressioni di natura antropica agenti sui bacini idrografici, particolare rilevanza hanno sia la progressiva perdita di suoli naturali in favore di suoli poco, o per nulla, permeabili (es. strade, edifici, parcheggi, etc.) che la regimazione e regolazione dei deflussi sulla rete di drenaggio naturale mediante interventi idraulici. In particolare, l’ultima relazione sullo stato dell’ambiente europeo a cura dell’Agenzia Europea dell’Ambiente (AEA, 2010) considera l’impermeabilizzazione dei bacini naturali come uno dei maggiori processi di degrado del suolo. L’aumento del grado di urbanizzazione dei bacini naturali, inteso come aumento della frazione impermeabile del suolo derivante dell…

Modeling the hydrological and mechanical effect of roots on shallow landslides

This study proposes a new methodology for estimating the additional shear strength (or cohesion) exerted by vegetation roots on slope stability analysis within a coupled hydrological-stability model. The mechanical root cohesion is estimated within a Fiber Bundle Model framework that allows for the evaluation of the root strength as a function of stress-strain relationships of populations of fibers. The use of such model requires the knowledge of the root architecture. A branching topology model based on Leonardo's rule is developed, providing an estimation of the amount of roots and the distribution of diameters with depth. The proposed methodology has been implemented into an existing dis…

MODELING THE SHRUB ENCROACHMENT IN THE NORTHERN CHIHUAHUAN DESERT GRASSLANDS WITH A CELLULAR AUTOMATA MODEL

A physically-based and distributed tool for modeling the hydrological and mechanical processes of shallow landslides

This work presents the capabilities of a model, i.e. the tRIBS-VEGGIE-Landslide, in two different versions, i.e. developed within a probabilistic framework and coupled with a root cohesion module. The probabilistic model treats geotechnical and soil retention curve parameters as random variables across the basin and estimates theoretical probability distributions of slope stability and the associated “factor of safety” commonly used to describe the occurrence of shallow landslides. The derived distributions are used to obtain the spatiotemporal dynamics of probability of failure, conditioned on soil moisture dynamics at each watershed location. The framework has been tested in the Luquillo …

Predicting the impacts of climate change on plant dynamics and tree-grass-shrub competition using a Cellular Automata model in a Mediterranean catchment in Sicily, Italy

INFLUENCE OF RAINFALL OBSERVATION NETWORK ON MODELED HYDROLOGICAL RESPONSE

Precipitation data, one of the most important input required in hydrological modeling and forecasting, are usually recorded using raingauges which are classical and fundamental tools able to provide an estimate of rainfall at a point. The consistency of precipitation monitoring network in terms of spatial scale (network density and location of raingauges) and time resolution has to be capable to reproduce, with acceptable accuracy, the characteristics of the flood phenomenon. In this context, over the last thirty years, several studies concerning the influence of point measurement of rainfall for the estimation of total runoff volume have been carried out. Aim of this paper is using a physi…