Predictive rainfall erosive climate mapping at multiple spatial-scales
- Submitted by:
- Nazzareno Diodato
- Company:
- Met European Research Observatory, GEWEX-CEOP Network
- Submitted on:
- 22 Feb, 2010
- Category:
- Environmental Impact Award
- Country:
- Italy
- Industry:
- Consulting/Management Svcs/GIS
- Products Used:
- ArcGIS - ESRI
- Total Votes:
- 35
a)Setting of the Mediterranean area, b) Kriged-map of annual rainfall erosivity at regional scale, c) as in a) at sub-regional-scale, and d), as in c) at local-scale, averaged upon the period 1961-2000. (e) Spatial covariance structure with experimental set (point) and regionalization model (curve)
Rainstorm and related rainfall-erosivity, has always been a prominent environmental threat in the course of human history, especially affecting the agricultural sector by damaging hydrological events (e.g., overland flow, soil erosion and nutrient losses). However, it was also recognised that there was no suitable Mediterranean-wide map of rainfall aggressiveness, and that local existing maps differed widely in methodology and scales of assessment.
Predictive Rainfall Erosive Climate Mapping (PRECliMap) can be defined as the development of a numerical or statistical geospatial model for predicting climate erosive force at multiple spatial-scales. At the beginning, larger vision in extent monitoring and surveillance loop are, however, important, since we do not know where power of ainfall might take place. In this way, the objective of the present project was to evaluate the effect of the spatial structure on the multiple scale-patterns of the rainfall erosivity across Mediterranean land areas using the geostatistical approach.
Around the Mediterranean, largely erosive rainfalls occur especially in autumn and summer, and are generally confined to certain fairly well-defined mountainous areas and in proximity of the coasts.
At regional scale pattern high annual average values (above 1500 MJ mm h-1 ha-1) are expected across north Spain and Pyrenees, Portugal, France, Italy and Balkanic Peninsula. It is known that the Atlantic rainstorms are reinforced along their western storm-track from cyclogenetic processes occurring also in the Mediterranean basin. However, the Mediterranean stormy cyclones are characterized by short life-cycles, with average radius ranging from 300 to 500 km. This is well reflected in the erosive discontinuity between western and eastern Mediterranean lands and in the strong energetic losses of the storm over lower latitude.