TY - JOUR A1 - Krol, Maarten A1 - Jaeger, Annekathrin A1 - Bronstert, Axel A1 - Güntner, Andreas T1 - Integrated modelling of climate, water, soil, agricultural and socio-economic processes: A general introduction of the methodology and some exemplary results from the semi-arid north-east of Brazil JF - Journal of hydrology N2 - Many semi-arid regions are characterised by water scarcity and vulnerability of natural resources, pronounced climatic variability and social stress. Integrated studies including climatotogy, hydrology, and socio-econornic studies are required both for analysing the dynamic natural conditions and to assess possible strategies to make semi-arid regions Less vulnerable to the present and changing climate. The model introduced here dynamically describes the retationships between climate forcing, water availability, agriculture and selected societal processes. The model has been tailored to simulate the rather complex situation in the semi-and north-eastern Brazil in a quantitative manner including the sensitivity to external forcing, such as climate change. The selected results presented show the general functioning of the integrated model, with a primary focus on climate change impacts. It becomes evident that due to Large differences in regional climate scenarios, it is still impossible to give quantitative values for the most probable development, e.g., to assign probabilities to the simulated results. However, it becomes clear that water is a very crucial factor, and that an efficient and ecologically sound water management is a key question for the further development of that semi-arid region. The simulation results show that, independent of the differences in climate change scenarios, rain-fed farming is more vulnerable to drought impacts compared to irrigated farming. However, the capacity of irrigation and other water infrastructure systems to enhance resilience in respect to climatic fluctuations is significantly constrained given a significant negative precipitation trend. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - integrated modelling KW - integrated river basin management KW - water resources management KW - semi-arid hydrology KW - climate change Y1 - 2006 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2005.12.021 SN - 0022-1694 VL - 328 IS - 3-4 SP - 417 EP - 431 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bronstert, Axel A1 - Agarwal, Ankit A1 - Boessenkool, Berry A1 - Crisologo, Irene A1 - Fischer, Madlen A1 - Heistermann, Maik A1 - Koehn-Reich, Lisei A1 - Andres Lopez-Tarazon, Jose A1 - Moran, Thomas A1 - Ozturk, Ugur A1 - Reinhardt-Imjela, Christian A1 - Wendi, Dadiyorto T1 - Forensic hydro-meteorological analysis of an extreme flash flood BT - the 2016-05-29 event in Braunsbach, SW Germany JF - The science of the total environment : an international journal for scientific research into the environment and its relationship with man N2 - The flash-flood in Braunsbach in the north-eastern part of Baden-Wuerttemberg/Germany was a particularly strong and concise event which took place during the floods in southern Germany at the end of May/early June 2016. This article presents a detailed analysis of the hydro-meteorological forcing and the hydrological consequences of this event. A specific approach, the "forensic hydrological analysis" was followed in order to include and combine retrospectively a variety of data from different disciplines. Such an approach investigates the origins, mechanisms and course of such natural events if possible in a "near real time" mode, in order to follow the most recent traces of the event. The results show that it was a very rare rainfall event with extreme intensities which, in combination with catchment properties, led to extreme runoff plus severe geomorphological hazards, i.e. great debris flows, which together resulted in immense damage in this small rural town Braunsbach. It was definitely a record-breaking event and greatly exceeded existing design guidelines for extreme flood discharge for this region, i.e. by a factor of about 10. Being such a rare or even unique event, it is not reliably feasible to put it into a crisp probabilistic context. However, one can conclude that a return period clearly above 100 years can be assigned for all event components: rainfall, peak discharge and sediment transport. Due to the complex and interacting processes, no single flood cause or reason for the very high damage can be identified, since only the interplay and the cascading characteristics of those led to such an event. The roles of different human activities on the origin and/or intensification of such an extreme event are finally discussed. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Flash flood analysis KW - Forensic disaster analysis KW - Radar rainfall data KW - Extreme discharge data KW - Extreme event Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.02.241 SN - 0048-9697 SN - 1879-1026 VL - 630 SP - 977 EP - 991 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mamede, George Leite A1 - Guentner, Andreas A1 - Medeiros, Pedro Henrique Augusto A1 - de Araujo, Jose Carlos A1 - Bronstert, Axel T1 - Modeling the Effect of Multiple Reservoirs on Water and Sediment Dynamics in a Semiarid Catchment in Brazil JF - Journal of Hydrologic Engineering N2 - Taking into account the climatic conditions of the semiarid region of Brazil, with its intermittent rivers and long periods of water scarcity, a dense network of surface reservoirs (on average one dam every 5 km(2)) of very different sizes has been built. The impact of such a network on water and sediment dynamics constitutes a remarkable challenge for hydrologists. The main objective of this work is to present a novel way of simulating water and sediment fluxes through such high-density reservoir networks, which enables the assessment of water and sediment retention in those structures. The new reservoir modeling approach has been coupled with the fully process-oriented and semidistributed hydrological WASA-SED model, which was tailored for semiarid hydroclimatological characteristics. This integrated modeling system was applied to the 933-km(2) Bengue catchment, located in semiarid northeastern Brazil, which has a network of 114 reservoirs with a wide range of surface areas (from 0.003 to 350 ha). The small reservoirs were grouped into size classes according to their storage capacity and a cascade routing scheme was applied to describe the upstream-downstream position of the classes; the large reservoirs were handled explicitly in the reservoir modeling approach. According to the model results, the proposed approach is capable of representing the water and sediment fluxes though the entire reservoir network with reasonable accuracy. In addition, the model shows that the dynamics of water and sediment within the Bengue catchment are strongly impacted by the presence of multiple reservoirs, which are able to retain approximately 21% of the generated runoff and almost 42% of the sediment yield of the catchment for the simulation period, from 2000 to 2012. (C) 2018 American Society of Civil Engineers. KW - Reservoir network KW - Semiarid catchment KW - Sediment retention KW - Water storage dynamic Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0001701 SN - 1084-0699 SN - 1943-5584 VL - 23 IS - 12 PB - American Society of Civil Engineers CY - Reston ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vormoor, Klaus Josef A1 - Heistermann, Maik A1 - Bronstert, Axel A1 - Lawrence, Deborah T1 - Hydrological model parameter (in)stability BT - "crash testing" the HBV model under contrasting flood seasonality conditions JF - Hydrological sciences journal = Journal des sciences hydrologiques N2 - This paper investigates the transferability of calibrated HBV model parameters under stable and contrasting conditions in terms of flood seasonality and flood generating processes (FGP) in five Norwegian catchments with mixed snowmelt/rainfall regimes. We apply a series of generalized (differential) split-sample tests using a 6-year moving window over (i) the entire runoff observation periods, and (ii) two subsets of runoff observations distinguished by the seasonal occurrence of annual maximum floods during either spring or autumn. The results indicate a general model performance loss due to the transfer of calibrated parameters to independent validation periods of -5 to -17%, on average. However, there is no indication that contrasting flood seasonality exacerbates performance losses, which contradicts the assumption that optimized parameter sets for snowmelt-dominated floods (during spring) perform particularly poorly on validation periods with rainfall-dominated floods (during autumn) and vice versa. KW - hydrological modelling KW - flood seasonality KW - differential split-sample test KW - flood generating processes KW - Nordic catchments Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2018.1466056 SN - 0262-6667 SN - 2150-3435 VL - 63 IS - 7 SP - 991 EP - 1007 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - GEN A1 - Petrow, Theresia A1 - Heistermann, Maik A1 - Bronstert, Axel T1 - Analysis of Flash Floods in Germany T2 - Hydrologie und Wasserbewirtschaftung Y1 - 2017 SN - 1439-1783 VL - 61 SP - 212 EP - 212 PB - Bundesanst. für Gewässerkunde CY - Koblenz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vormoor, Klaus Josef A1 - Rossler, Ole A1 - Bürger, Gerd A1 - Bronstert, Axel A1 - Weingartner, Rolf T1 - When timing matters-considering changing temporal structures in runoff response surfaces JF - Climatic change : an interdisciplinary, intern. journal devoted to the description, causes and implications of climatic change N2 - Scenario-neutral response surfaces illustrate the sensitivity of a simulated natural system, represented by a specific impact variable, to systematic perturbations of climatic parameters. This type of approach has recently been developed as an alternative to top-down approaches for the assessment of climate change impacts. A major limitation of this approach is the underrepresentation of changes in the temporal structure of the climate input data (i.e., the seasonal and day-to-day variability) since this is not altered by the perturbation. This paper presents a framework that aims to examine this limitation by perturbing both observed and projected climate data time series for a future period, which both serve as input into a hydrological model (the HBV model). The resulting multiple response surfaces are compared at a common domain, the standardized runoff response surface (SRRS). We apply this approach in a case study catchment in Norway to (i) analyze possible changes in mean and extreme runoff and (ii) quantify the influence of changes in the temporal structure represented by 17 different climate input sets using linear mixed-effect models. Results suggest that climate change induced increases in mean and peak flow runoff and only small changes in low flow. They further suggest that the effect of the different temporal structures of the climate input data considerably affects low flows and floods (at least 21% influence), while it is negligible for mean runoff. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1940-1 SN - 0165-0009 SN - 1573-1480 VL - 142 SP - 213 EP - 226 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Huang, Shaochun A1 - Hattermann, Fred Fokko A1 - Krysanova, Valentina A1 - Bronstert, Axel T1 - Projections of climate change impacts on river flood conditions in Germany by combining three different RCMs with a regional eco-hydrological model JF - Climatic change : an interdisciplinary, intern. journal devoted to the description, causes and implications of climatic change N2 - A general increase in precipitation has been observed in Germany in the last century, and potential changes in flood generation and intensity are now at the focus of interest. The aim of the paper is twofold: a) to project the future flood conditions in Germany accounting for various river regimes (from pluvial to nival-pluvial regimes) and under different climate scenarios (the high, A2, low, B1, and medium, A1B, emission scenarios) and b) to investigate sources of uncertainty generated by climate input data and regional climate models. Data of two dynamical Regional Climate Models (RCMs), REMO (REgional Model) and CCLM (Cosmo-Climate Local Model), and one statistical-empirical RCM, Wettreg (Wetterlagenbasierte Regionalisierungsmethode: weather-type based regionalization method), were applied to drive the eco-hydrological model SWIM (Soil and Water Integrated Model), which was previously validated for 15 gauges in Germany. At most of the gauges, the 95 and 99 percentiles of the simulated discharge using SWIM with observed climate data had a good agreement with the observed discharge for 1961-2000 (deviation within +/- 10 %). However, the simulated discharge had a bias when using RCM climate as input for the same period. Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distributions were fitted to the annual maximum series of river runoff for each realization for the control and scenario periods, and the changes in flood generation over the whole simulation time were analyzed. The 50-year flood values estimated for two scenario periods (2021-2060, 2061-2100) were compared to the ones derived from the control period using the same climate models. The results driven by the statistical-empirical model show a declining trend in the flood level for most rivers, and under all climate scenarios. The simulations driven by dynamical models give various change directions depending on region, scenario and time period. The uncertainty in estimating high flows and, in particular, extreme floods remains high, due to differences in regional climate models, emission scenarios and multi-realizations generated by RCMs. Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0586-2 SN - 0165-0009 SN - 1573-1480 VL - 116 IS - 3-4 SP - 631 EP - 663 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Medeiros, Pedro Henrique Augusto A1 - de Araujo, Jose Carlos A1 - Bronstert, Axel T1 - Interception measurements and assessment of Gash model performance for a tropical semi-arid region N2 - Semi-arid environments usually face water scarcity and conflicts for its use; therefore a complete understanding of the water balance in these regions is desired. To evaluate interception, measurements of precipitation, throughfall and stemflow were carried out in a Brazilian tropical semi-arid experimental watershed with well preserved Caatinga vegetation. Data analysis indicates that interception losses correspond to 13% of total rainfall, representing an important process in the watershed's water balance, where runoff is only 6% of total precipitation. Gash interception model was applied in the region with good results for long term simulation. Nevertheless, the model produced significant but not systematic errors on a daily basis. This was attributed to its incapability of representing the temporal variation of precipitation during the event, which is a major factor affecting interception. Rainfall intensity was shown to be a good parameter to determine an applicability threshold for Gash model in the study area. Y1 - 2009 SN - 0045-6888 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bronstert, Axel A1 - Kneis, David A1 - Bogena, Heye R. T1 - Interactions and feedbacks in hydrological change : relevance and possibilities of modelling N2 - The hydrological cycle is a dynamic system by its nature, but sometimes accelerated through anthropogenic activity. A "hydrological change" (i.e. a water cycle that is significantly changing over a longer period of time) can be very different in character, depending on the specific natural conditions and the underlying spatial and temporal scales. Such changes may affect the availability and quality of water as essential pre-requisites for human development and ecosystem stability. Hydrological extremes, such as floods and droughts, may also be affected, what is also vitally important, because of their profound economic and societal impacts. Anthropogenically induced hydrological change can be attributed to three main external causes: first, the Earth's climate is changing significantly and thus directly affecting the terrestrial hydro-systems via the exchange of energy and heat. The second major issue is the land cover and its management that has been modified fundamentally by conversion of land for agriculture, forestry, and other purposes such as industrialisation and urbanisation. Finally, water resources are being used more than ever for human development, especially for agriculture, industrial activities, and navigation. If the regional terrestrial hydrological cycle is changing and counter-measures are desirable, it is from a scientific perspective mandatory to understand the extent and nature of such changes, and, especially, to identify their possible anthropogenic origin. There are, however, fundamental gaps in our knowledge, in particular about the role of feedbacks between individual processes and compartments of the hydrological cycle or the relevance of the interactions with other sub-systems of our planet, such as the atmosphere or the vegetation. This paper mentions several examples of hydrological change and discusses their identification, interaction processes, and feedback mechanisms, along with modelling issues. The possibilities and limitations of modelling are demonstrated by means of two studies: one from the river-lake system on the Middle-Havel River and one from the catchment of the Wahnbach Reservoir. The applied model systems comprise a series of consecutively coupled individual models (so-called one-way-coupling). Model systems that are able reflect feedback effects (two-way- coupling) are still in the development stage. It became clear that the applied model systems were able to reproduce the observed dynamics of the hydrological cycle and of selected matter fluxes. However, one has to be aware that the simulated time periods and scenarios represent rather moderately transient conditions, what is the justification why the one-way-coupling seems to be applicable. Furthermore, it was shown that the modelling uncertainty is considerably large. Nevertheless, this uncertainty can be distinguished from effects of changed internal systems dynamics or from changed boundary conditions, what is a basis for the usability of such model systems for prognostic purposes. Y1 - 2009 SN - 1439-1783 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jagdhuber, Thomas A1 - Hajnsek, Irena A1 - Bronstert, Axel A1 - Papathanassiou, Konstantinos Panagiotis T1 - Soil moisture estimation under low vegetation cover using a multi-angular polarimetric decomposition JF - IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing N2 - The estimation of volumetric soil moisture under low agricultural vegetation from fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data at L-band using a multi-angular polarimetric decomposition is investigated. Radar polarimetry provides the framework to decompose the backscattered signal into different canonical scattering mechanisms referring to scattering contributions from the underlying soil and the vegetation cover. Multiangular observation diversity further increases the information space for soil moisture inversion enabling higher inversion rates and a stable inversion performance. The developed approach was applied on the multi-angular L-band data set acquired by German Aerospace Center's ESAR sensor as part of the OPAQUE campaign in 2008. The obtained results are compared against ground measurements collected by the OPAQUE team over a variety of vegetated agricultural fields. The validation of the estimated against ground measured soil moisture results in an root mean square error level of 6-8 vol.% including all test fields with a variety of crop types. KW - Multi-angular model-based decomposition KW - polarimetric SAR KW - soil moisture Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2012.2209433 SN - 0196-2892 VL - 51 IS - 4 SP - 2201 EP - 2215 PB - Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers CY - Piscataway ER -