Major floods around the world have raised questions about the frequency and magnitude of such phenomena. Although changes in climate and land use are known to play a critical role in river floods, how they actually translate into considerable variations in intensity remains unknown. Prof. Günter Blöschl addresses this issue.
With an ERC Advanced grant, Prof. Blöschl takes a comprehensive approach, which includes the analysis of 200 years of flood data from selected catchments, i.e. areas where waters from rain falls and melting snow or ice converge. These catchments are located along three European axes, from North to South and West to East: UK-Italy, Scandinavia-Romania and Spain-Hungary.
With all these data, Prof. Blöschl and his team aim to build a flood-change model that could predict how variations in one parameter (e.g. change in weather, storms, soil moisture or land management) could affect floods levels. The model will be tested for the different catchments and also be compared with results from data-based methods. His research will make it possible to clarify the effects of land use and climate on floods, a vital step towards predicting how floods will change in the future.
(September 2013)
Project information
