&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Brief communication&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Does climatic change in precipitation drive erosion in Naxos Island, Greece?&amp;quot;

P T Nastos,N Evelpidou,A Vassilopoulos

doi:10.5194/nhess-10-379-2010

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper we examined whether the recorded precipitation changes cause erosion in Naxos Island, Greece using precipitation indices derived from daily precipitation totals, during the period 1955–2007, in order to develop an erosion risk model. Although the mean annual precipitation appear to be low (~360.0 mm), the erosion processes of the area are very intense, because of the intensive character of precipitation, the high slope relief, the differential lithology and the absence of important land cover The results of the analysis showed that the climatic changes in precipitation and the changes in land cover and land use are the main drivers for the erosion. This is why the 2nd (1971–1985) and 3rd (1986–2007) studied sub-periods may be called of high erosion risk, and especially the second one mainly because of the increased frequency of extreme precipitation events.

Highlights

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007), the frequency of heavy precipitation events has been increased over most land areas, consistent with warming and observed increases of atmospheric water vapor
The geomorphological status is based on sub-parameters; a) the morphological slope, which stands for the morphological slope gradient, the form of the slope and the aspect, b) the drainage density, which is highly related to water’s runoff quantity and the substratum’s permeability, and c) the main geomorphological characteristics of the study area
Empirical logical rules were constructed and followed in the model developed in Geographical Information System (GIS) environment used MapBasic programming language, in order to extract how the different climatic parameters interfere with the climatic index

Summary

Introduction

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007), the frequency of heavy precipitation events has been increased over most land areas, consistent with warming and observed increases of atmospheric water vapor. Nastos and Zerefos (2008) found that increased observed variance and scale parameter of the fitted Gamma distributions on the precipitation datasets of Greece occur/take in the western and southerneastern regions, especially during the last decade 1991–2000, indicating the incidence of extreme daily precipitation. Nastos and Zerefos (2009) studying the spatial and temporal variability of consecutive dry (CDD) and wet days (CWD) in Greece concluded that CDD appear maxima in the Cycladic archipelago area and the south-eastern Aegean Sea, while the longest CWD are observed in western Greece and western part of Crete Island. The purpose of this study is to present and analyze the run off erosion regime in Naxos Island, Greece and attempt to interpret the climatic role of the precipitation indexes in the erosion process Various papers have been published on the topic of erosion risk applying different methodologies, based on several parameters, such as morphometric variables (Jozefaciuk and Jozefaciuk, 1993; Gournelos et al, 2004), rainfall erosion indexes (Stocking and Elwell, 1976; Chavez, 2006) or mathematically based erosion risk self-organising maps (Bartkowiak et al, 2002).

Objectives

Results

Conclusion