Abstract
Flash floods are important natural disasters in China that can result in casualties and property losses. In this paper, we present a quantitative approach to examine the driving factors of the spatiotemporal distribution of flash floods based on a geographical detector. The environmental background condition (elevation, slope, etc.), precipitation, and human activity factors, as well as changes in these factors, are investigated in Sichuan Province via a driving force analysis. The results show that heavy precipitation is the most important driver, with power of determinant (PD) values of 0.71 and 0.77 for the spatial distributions of flash floods from 1995 to 2004 and from 2005 to 2014, respectively. The PDs of population density are 0.65 and 0.78 in the same two periods, while those of elevation are 0.59 and 0.73. Precipitation variability is the most important driver of the spatiotemporal variability of flash floods, followed by GDP density and population density, with PDs of 0.48, 0.29, and 0.27, respectively. The results show that human activities and precipitation are the primary driving forces of the spatiotemporal variability of flash floods and should be the focus of flash flood prevention and forecasting.
Highlights
China is a mountainous country, and flash floods are the primary natural disaster that causes casualties
The comparison of divided into two periods: to 2004 (D95–04) and D05–14 shows that more flash floods occurred annually in Sichuan Province in D05–14 than in D95–04, 4
These findings revealed that the entire spatial distribution of flash floods is affected by environmental background conditions, precipitation, and human activities, and the highest power of determinant (PD) value of each group was greater than 0.7
Summary
China is a mountainous country, and flash floods are the primary natural disaster that causes casualties. Previous studies have indicated that a flash flood is the combined result of various spatiotemporal factors [4,5,6] Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been applied in flash flood research. Qualitative methods have primarily focused on evaluating the risk of flash flood and danger zone division, including the main factors that affect the distribution of flash floods. Several researchers have assigned quantitative weights to risk factors by establishing an analytical hierarchy and expert scoring methods [10,11,12] Such methods can be used to assess the driving forces of flash flood distributions. An area weighting method was used to calculate the flash flood intensity of each small watershed [29]. Where S(i, j)D2 is the jth human activity factor of the ith small watershed in D05–14 and S(i, j)D1 is the jth human activity factor of the ith small watershed in D95–04
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