Abstract
Abstract. Pluvial or flash floods generated by heavy precipitation events cause large economic damage and loss of life worldwide. As discharge observations from such extreme occurrences are rare, especially on the scale of small catchments or even hillslopes, data from artificial sprinkling experiments offer valuable information on runoff generation processes, overland and subsurface flow rates, and response times. We conducted 132 large-scale sprinkling experiments on natural hillslopes at 23 sites with different soil types and geology on pastures and arable land within the federal state of Baden-Württemberg in south-western Germany. The experiments were realized between 2016 and 2017. Simulated rainfall events of varying durations were based on (a) the site-specific 100-year return periods of rainfall with different durations and (b) the maximum rainfall intensity observed locally. The 100 m2 experimental area was divided into three individual plots, and overland and subsurface flow, soil moisture, and water level dynamics in the temporarily saturated soil zone were measured at 1 min resolution. Furthermore, soil characteristics were described in detail for each site. The data were carefully processed and corrected for measurement errors and combined into a consistent and easy-to-use database. The experiments revealed large variability in possible runoff responses to similar rainfall characteristics. In general, agricultural fields produced more overland flow than grassland. The latter generated hardly any runoff during the first simulated 100-year event on initially dry soils. The data set provides valuable information on runoff generation variability from natural hillslopes and may be used for the development and evaluation of hydrological models, especially those considering physical processes governing runoff generation during extreme precipitation events. The data set presented in this paper is freely available from the FreiDok plus data repository at https://doi.org/10.6094/UNIFR/151460 (Ries et al., 2019).
Highlights
Pluvial floods originate from extreme, often small-scale convective rainfall events that can exceed the infiltration capacity and lead to ponding and overland flow (Bernet et al, 2017).Such events can cause tremendous economic damage
Pluvial floods in urban areas receive significant public attention, possibly because of an elevated probability of a high number of affected people and large economic damage caused by a single event, even though rural areas are affected
Exceptionally devastating pluvial floods in Germany and the entire continent of Europe have intensified the awareness of the risk associated with such events and put pressure on water management and communal decision makers to better predict possible flood events and identify flood-risk-prone locations distant from permanent water
Summary
Pluvial floods (sometimes in an extended context referred to as surface water floods or flash floods) originate from extreme, often small-scale convective rainfall events that can exceed the infiltration capacity and lead to ponding and overland flow (Bernet et al, 2017). To investigate runoff generation processes during intensive rainfall events at the hillslope scale, sprinkling experiments have been conducted, especially in the alpine area of Germany, Switzerland and Austria, by Bunza et al (1996), Faeh (1997), Scherrer (1997) and Markart et al (1996) using comparable systems and intensities. Model development as well as model evaluation would benefit from long-term runoff time series from small catchments, hillslopes or – in cases where such data are not available – from experiments simulating extreme rainfall events. The simulation of high rainfall intensities required flow rates up to 500 L min−1 – a circumstance that drastically reduced the potential experimental sites to locations close to main supply lines with sufficiently high water pressure. Was paid during the installation of all field equipment to reducing the disturbance of the experimental plot
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