Assessment of the Impact of Changes in Storm Rainfall and Landscape Characteristics on the Maximum Flow of Small Rivers

Abstract

Significant amount of researches has established that storm rain began to appear more frequently and their intensity increases in many regions of the world. This trend increases the maximum water discharges on small catchments. However, their increase may occur due to a change in the landscape during the urbanization of the territory. Satellite information and GIS can reflect landscape changes. Thus, the main purpose of the research is to assess the effect of an increase in storm precipitation and the effect of landscape changes in the increase in maximum water discharge on a specific catchment. Accordingly, the problems were decided: an estimation of the increase in maximum precipitation over the past decades; assessment of landscape changes over the past decades using the geographic information system; an assessment of their contribution to an increase in the maximum discharge of water over the past decades. The obtained results of calculations have showed that more short time series of observations for the storm precipitation during last decades (in comparison to full long time of observation) give more real represent about dangerous quantile of distribution for random values (\( P = 1\% \)), which is used for the projecting of the construction objects and evaluation of possible inundation of territory. Impact of the increasing of values of storm precipitations at the maximum water discharge is significant, however the discharge is changed under impact of change of the catchment landscape too, which we can and must take to consideration.