Search results for "Hydrological processe"

Climate Change in the Mediterranean Basin (Part II): A Review of Challenges and Uncertainties in Climate Change Modeling and Impact Analyses

2023

AbstractThe Mediterranean basin is particularly prone to climate change and vulnerable to its impacts. One of the most relevant consequences of climate change, especially for the southern Mediterranean regions, is certainly water scarcity as result of a reduction of surface runoff and groundwater levels. Despite the progress achieved in recent years in the field of climate change and its impact on water resources, results and outcomes should be treated with due caution since any future climate projection and derived implications are inevitably affected by a certain degree of uncertainty arising from each different stage of the entire modeling chain. This work offers a comprehensive overview…

Physical and hydraulic characterization of a clay soil at the plot scale

2010

Summary The soil physical and hydraulic properties have to be determined for interpreting and simulating many hydrological processes. An investigation was carried out to determine the physical and hydraulic characteristics of a clay soil at the plot scale. An intensive sampling of the surface soil layer of two plots of 4 × 11 m2 was carried out by measuring, for each plot, dry soil bulk density, ρb, and antecedent soil water content, θi, at 88 sampling points and field-saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, Kfs, at 176 sampling points. A wide range of Kfs values (0.7–5107 mm h−1) were measured by the Simplified Falling Head (SFH) technique. For each variable, the two plots yielded very simi…

USING A TRANSIENT INFILTROMETRIC TECHNIQUE FOR INTENSIVELY SAMPLING FIELD-SATURATED HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY OF A CLAY SOIL IN TWO RUNOFF PLOTS

2012

Point measurement of soil properties allows to explain and simulate plot scale hydrological processes. An intensive sampling was carried out at the surface of an unsaturated clay soil to measure, on two adjacent plots of 4×11 m2 and two different dates (May 2007 and February-March 2008), dry soil bulk density, rb, and antecedent soil water content, qi, at 88 points. Field-saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, Kfs, was also measured at 176 points by the transient Simplified Falling Head technique to determine the soil water permeability characteristics at the beginning of a possible rainfall event yielding measurable runoff. The rb values did not differ significantly between the two dates b…

Physically-based and distributed approach to analyze rainfall-triggered landslides at watershed scale

2011

Abstract Landslides are a serious threat to life and property throughout the world. The causes of landslides are various since multiple dynamic processes are involved in driving slope failures. One of these causes is prolonged rainfall, which affects slope stability in different ways. Water infiltrating in a hillslope may cause a rise of the piezometric surface, which, in turn, involves an increase of the pore water pressure and a decrease of the soil shear resistance. For this reason, knowledge of spatio-temporal dynamics of soil water content, infiltration processes and groundwater dynamics, is of considerable importance in the understanding and prediction of landslides dynamics. In this …

The Effect of Hydrology on Soil Erosion

2020

In this Special Issue, we have tried to include manuscripts about soil erosion and degradation processes and the accelerated rates due to hydrological processes and climate change. We considered that the main goal was successfully reached. The new research focused on measurements, modelling, and experiments under field or laboratory conditions developed at different scales (pedon, hillslope, and catchment) were submitted and published. This Special Issue received investigations from different parts of the world such as Ethiopia, Morocco, China, Iran, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain, among others. We are happy to see that all papers presented findings characterized as unconventional, provo…

INVESTIGATIONS ON INFILTRATION METHODS FOR AN IMPROVED SOIL HYDRAULIC CHARACTERIZATION

2020

Climate Change in the Mediterranean Basin (Part I): Induced Alterations on Climate Forcings and Hydrological Processes

2022

In the last years, the Mediterranean basin has been widely recognized as one of the most vulnerable areas in the world to climate change; because of its high concentration of urban and industrial settlements, it is one of the most impacted areas of the world in terms of water scarcity. The present paper aims at reviewing the main observed and predicted effects of climate change on hydrological processes directly related to water availability in the Mediterranean Basin, mainly focusing on the last ten years of research. While an in-depth discussion about possible future water scarcity problem in the Mediterranean area and the sources of uncertainty affecting future climate projections and im…

Testing an adapted beerkan infiltration run for a hydrologically relevant soil hydraulic characterization

2020

Abstract Literature raises doubts about the usability of infiltrometer methods to characterize soils in a hydrological perspective since these methods often yield excessively high infiltration rates or saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, Ks, values. For a loam (AR) and a silty-clay (RO) soil, beerkan infiltration runs were adapted in the perspective to obtain usable soil data to predict rainfall partition into infiltration and rainfall excess. In particular, the initially nearly dry soil was sampled with different water volumes (15 or 30) and heights of water application (low, L, 0.03 m, and high, H, 1.5 m), and the BEST-steady algorithm was applied to determine sorptivity, S, and Ks. Th…

Comparing two methods to perform a beerkan infiltration run in a loam soil at different dates

2023

<p>Performing beerkan infiltration runs with different heights of water pouring could help to obtain saturated soil sorptivity, <em>S</em>, and hydraulic conductivity, <em>K<sub>s</sub></em>, data usable to explain and simulate hydrological processes. However, most of the available information on the L (low height of water pouring, nearly 3 cm) - H (high height, 1-2 m) methodology refers to runs making use of a relatively limited number of water volumes and there is some sign that a few water volumes could yield an incomplete description of soil alteration phenomena induced by wetting. For a lo…

Estimating field-saturated soil hydraulic conductivity by a simplified Beerkan infiltration experiment

2014

Field-saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, Kfs, is highly variable. Therefore, interpreting and simulating hydrological processes, such as rainfall excess generation, need a large number of Kfs data even at the plot scale. Simple and reasonably rapid experiments should be carried out in the field. In this investigation, a simple infiltration experiment with a ring inserted shortly into the soil and the estimation of the so-called a* parameter allowed to obtain an approximate measurement of Kfs. The theoretical approach was tested with reference to 149 sampling points established on Burundian soils. The estimated Kfs with the value of first approximation of a* for most agricultural field s…