Decadal and century-long changes in the reconstruction of erosive rainfall anomalies in a Mediterranean fluvial basin

Auteur(s) et Affiliation(s)



Description :
This paper deals with the potential of written historical documents to reconstruct yearly erosive rain anomalies (differences between erosivity values and long-term average) from precipitation amounts and weather anomalies. A detailed analysis was undertaken of the Calore River Basin (South Italy) erosive rainfall using data from 425-year-long series of both observations (1922-2004) and proxy-based reconstructions (1580-1921). Annual erosivity was computed for the observational time based on the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) scheme. A method was proposed that uses a weather index to account for the abundance of weather anomalies (rainfall extremes) as registered in historical documents. A long continuous series of rain-erosivity anomalies was produced by combining (and homogenizing) model-reconstructed and RUSLE data, thus providing a range of natural variability in climate erosivity to detect the main changes from 1580 to 2004. The so-called Little Ice Age was identified as the stormiest period. Important historical climate fluctuations were observed, but with a relevant smoothing in the last 150 years of the series.


Type de document :
Article de périodique

Source :
Earth surface processes and landforms, issn : 0197-9337, 2008, vol. 33, n°. 13, p. 2078-2093, nombre de pages : 16, Références bibliographiques : 4 p.

Date :
2008

Editeur :
Pays édition : Royaume-Uni, Chichester, Wiley