Interpreting historical, botanical, and geological evidence to aid preparations for future floods

Bruno Wilhelm; Juan Antonio Ballesteros Cánovas; Neil Macdonald; Willem H.J. Toonen; Victor Baker; Mariano Barriendos; Gerardo Benito; Achim Brauer; Juan Pablo Corella; Rhawn Denniston; Rüdiger Glaser; Monica Ionita; Michael Kahle; Tao Liu; Marc Luetscher; Mark Macklin; Manfred Mudelsee; Samuel Munoz; Lothar Schulte; Scott St. George; Markus Stoffel; Oliver Wetter

doi:10.1002/WAT2.1318

Interpreting historical, botanical, and geological evidence to aid preparations for future floods

Bruno Wilhelm, Juan Antonio Ballesteros Cánovas, Neil Macdonald, Willem H.J. Toonen, Victor Baker, Mariano Barriendos, Gerardo Benito, Achim Brauer, Juan Pablo Corella, Rhawn Denniston, Rüdiger Glaser, Monica Ionita, Michael Kahle, Tao Liu, Marc Luetscher, Mark Macklin, Manfred Mudelsee, Samuel Munoz, Lothar Schulte, Scott St. GeorgeMarkus Stoffel, Oliver Wetter

Geography, Environment and Society

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

75 Scopus citations

Abstract

River flooding is among the most destructive of natural hazards globally, causing widespread loss of life, damage to infrastructure and economic deprivation. Societies are currently under increasing threat from such floods, predominantly from increasing exposure of people and assets in flood‐prone areas, but also as a result of changes in flood magnitude, frequency, and timing. Accurate flood hazard and risk assessment are therefore crucial for the sustainable development of societies worldwide. With a paucity of hydrological measurements, evidence from the field offers the only insight into truly extreme events and their variability in space and time. Historical, botanical, and geological archives have increasingly been recognized as valuable sources of extreme flood event information. These different archives are here reviewed with a particular focus on the recording mechanisms of flood information, the historical development of the methodological approaches and the type of information that those archives can provide. These studies provide a wealthy dataset of hundreds of historical and palaeoflood series, whose analysis reveals a noticeable dominance of records in Europe. After describing the diversity of flood information provided by this dataset, we identify how these records have improved and could further improve flood hazard assessments and, thereby, flood management and mitigation plans.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	e1318
Journal	Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water
Volume	6
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/WAT2.1318
State	Published - Sep 24 2018

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This publication is a contribution to the Past Global Changes (PAGES) Floods Working Group. PAGES is supported by the US National Science Foundation and the Swiss Academy of Sciences. In addition, the publication has been inspired by the “Cross-community workshop on past flood variability” of the PAGES Floods Working Group that held in Grenoble, France, June 27–30, 2016. The meeting has been generously supported by Past Global Changes, Labex OSUG@2020 (Investissements d'avenir – ANR10 LABX56), European Geosciences Union, Grenoble-INP and Université Grenoble Alpes. The worldwide overview of historical and paleoflood records shown in Figure 6 was made possible thanks to many contributors that we warmly thanked. Further contributions are still warmly welcome as they will enable to update the interactive meta-database (http://pastglobalchanges.org/ini/wg/floods/wp1/data). The authors are very grateful to the Editor Stuart Lane for the invitation to submit this manuscript and to Eric Gaume and the anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments.

Funding Information:
This publication is a contribution to the Past Global Changes (PAGES) Floods Working Group. PAGES is supported by the US National Science Foundation and the Swiss Academy of Sciences. In addition, the publication has been inspired by the “Cross-community workshop on past flood variability” of the PAGES Floods Working Group that held in Grenoble, France, June 27–30, 2016. The meeting has been generously supported by Past Global Changes, Labex OSUG@2020 (Investissements d'avenir – ANR10 LABX56), European Geosciences Union, Grenoble-INP and Université Grenoble Alpes. The worldwide overview of historical and paleoflood records shown in Figure 6 was made possible thanks to many contribu-tors that we warmly thanked. Further contributions are still warmly welcome as they will enable to update the interactive meta-database (http://pastglobalchanges.org/ini/wg/floods/wp1/data). The authors are very grateful to the Editor Stuart Lane for the invitation to submit this manuscript and to Eric Gaume and the anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords

Flood hazard
historical archive
natural archive
palaeoflood evidence

Publisher link

10.1002/WAT2.1318

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Wilhelm, B., Cánovas, J. A. B., Macdonald, N., Toonen, W. H. J., Baker, V., Barriendos, M., Benito, G., Brauer, A., Corella, J. P., Denniston, R., Glaser, R., Ionita, M., Kahle, M., Liu, T., Luetscher, M., Macklin, M., Mudelsee, M., Munoz, S., Schulte, L., ... Wetter, O. (2018). Interpreting historical, botanical, and geological evidence to aid preparations for future floods. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, 6(1), [e1318]. https://doi.org/10.1002/WAT2.1318

Wilhelm, B, Cánovas, JAB, Macdonald, N, Toonen, WHJ, Baker, V, Barriendos, M, Benito, G, Brauer, A, Corella, JP, Denniston, R, Glaser, R, Ionita, M, Kahle, M, Liu, T, Luetscher, M, Macklin, M, Mudelsee, M, Munoz, S, Schulte, L, St. George, S, Stoffel, M & Wetter, O 2018, 'Interpreting historical, botanical, and geological evidence to aid preparations for future floods', Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, vol. 6, no. 1, e1318. https://doi.org/10.1002/WAT2.1318

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abstract = "River flooding is among the most destructive of natural hazards globally, causing widespread loss of life, damage to infrastructure and economic deprivation. Societies are currently under increasing threat from such floods, predominantly from increasing exposure of people and assets in flood‐prone areas, but also as a result of changes in flood magnitude, frequency, and timing. Accurate flood hazard and risk assessment are therefore crucial for the sustainable development of societies worldwide. With a paucity of hydrological measurements, evidence from the field offers the only insight into truly extreme events and their variability in space and time. Historical, botanical, and geological archives have increasingly been recognized as valuable sources of extreme flood event information. These different archives are here reviewed with a particular focus on the recording mechanisms of flood information, the historical development of the methodological approaches and the type of information that those archives can provide. These studies provide a wealthy dataset of hundreds of historical and palaeoflood series, whose analysis reveals a noticeable dominance of records in Europe. After describing the diversity of flood information provided by this dataset, we identify how these records have improved and could further improve flood hazard assessments and, thereby, flood management and mitigation plans.",

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author = "Bruno Wilhelm and C{\'a}novas, {Juan Antonio Ballesteros} and Neil Macdonald and Toonen, {Willem H.J.} and Victor Baker and Mariano Barriendos and Gerardo Benito and Achim Brauer and Corella, {Juan Pablo} and Rhawn Denniston and R{\"u}diger Glaser and Monica Ionita and Michael Kahle and Tao Liu and Marc Luetscher and Mark Macklin and Manfred Mudelsee and Samuel Munoz and Lothar Schulte and {St. George}, Scott and Markus Stoffel and Oliver Wetter",

note = "Funding Information: This publication is a contribution to the Past Global Changes (PAGES) Floods Working Group. PAGES is supported by the US National Science Foundation and the Swiss Academy of Sciences. In addition, the publication has been inspired by the “Cross-community workshop on past flood variability” of the PAGES Floods Working Group that held in Grenoble, France, June 27–30, 2016. The meeting has been generously supported by Past Global Changes, Labex OSUG@2020 (Investissements d'avenir – ANR10 LABX56), European Geosciences Union, Grenoble-INP and Universit{\'e} Grenoble Alpes. The worldwide overview of historical and paleoflood records shown in Figure 6 was made possible thanks to many contributors that we warmly thanked. Further contributions are still warmly welcome as they will enable to update the interactive meta-database (http://pastglobalchanges.org/ini/wg/floods/wp1/data). The authors are very grateful to the Editor Stuart Lane for the invitation to submit this manuscript and to Eric Gaume and the anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments. Funding Information: This publication is a contribution to the Past Global Changes (PAGES) Floods Working Group. PAGES is supported by the US National Science Foundation and the Swiss Academy of Sciences. In addition, the publication has been inspired by the “Cross-community workshop on past flood variability” of the PAGES Floods Working Group that held in Grenoble, France, June 27–30, 2016. The meeting has been generously supported by Past Global Changes, Labex OSUG@2020 (Investissements d'avenir – ANR10 LABX56), European Geosciences Union, Grenoble-INP and Universit{\'e} Grenoble Alpes. The worldwide overview of historical and paleoflood records shown in Figure 6 was made possible thanks to many contribu-tors that we warmly thanked. Further contributions are still warmly welcome as they will enable to update the interactive meta-database (http://pastglobalchanges.org/ini/wg/floods/wp1/data). The authors are very grateful to the Editor Stuart Lane for the invitation to submit this manuscript and to Eric Gaume and the anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.",

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AU - Baker, Victor

AU - Barriendos, Mariano

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Interpreting historical, botanical, and geological evidence to aid preparations for future floods

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Publisher link

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