Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Processes
- 2 Regional seismic shaking hazards in mountains
- 3 Volcanic hazards and risks: a geomorphological perspective
- 4 Mountain hazards
- 5 Review and future challenges in snow avalanche risk analysis
- 6 Landslide hazards
- 7 Catastrophic landslides and sedimentary budgets
- 8 Landslides and climatic change
- 9 The hazardousness of high-magnitude floods
- 10 Flood hazards: the context of fluvial geomorphology
- 11 Geomorphology and coastal hazards
- 12 Weathering hazards
- 13 Hazards associated with karst
- 14 Soil erosion
- 15 Desertification and land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions
- 16 Dune migration and encroachment
- Part II Processes and applications of geomorphology to risk assessment and management
- Index
- References
10 - Flood hazards: the context of fluvial geomorphology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Processes
- 2 Regional seismic shaking hazards in mountains
- 3 Volcanic hazards and risks: a geomorphological perspective
- 4 Mountain hazards
- 5 Review and future challenges in snow avalanche risk analysis
- 6 Landslide hazards
- 7 Catastrophic landslides and sedimentary budgets
- 8 Landslides and climatic change
- 9 The hazardousness of high-magnitude floods
- 10 Flood hazards: the context of fluvial geomorphology
- 11 Geomorphology and coastal hazards
- 12 Weathering hazards
- 13 Hazards associated with karst
- 14 Soil erosion
- 15 Desertification and land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions
- 16 Dune migration and encroachment
- Part II Processes and applications of geomorphology to risk assessment and management
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
River flooding occurs as high water inundates the adjacent floodplain, and is controlled by a combination of discreet processes operating at local and watershed scales. A floodplain is the relatively flat alluvial landform adjacent to a river that is more or less related to the modern flood regime (Wolman and Leopold,1957; Nanson and Croke, 1992; Knighton, 1998; Bridge, 2003). Most floods are natural events vital to river and floodplain geomorphological (Leopold et al., 1964) and ecosystem processes (Hupp 1988; Junk et al., 1989; Thoms, 2003). When humans are impacted, however, floods become “natural disasters” (Figure 10.1). For thousands of years floods have been among the most common and severe natural disasters on Earth, in terms of economic damage and loss of life.
Floods in most river basins are caused by excessive rainfall generated by a variety of atmospheric mechanisms (Smith and Ward, 1988; Slade and Patton, 2002). In cold-winter regions, large floods can be generated from snow/ice melt, particularly in combination with rainfall, while along coastal-draining rivers extensive flooding may be associated with storm surge events. Floods are also generated from catastrophic failure of artificial (reservoirs) and natural lakes, a category that includes dams created by ice, glacial moraines, volcanic lava flows, and landslides (Costa, 1988). Flood hazard refers to the potential of a given flood to threaten human life and property (Smith, 1996).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Geomorphological Hazards and Disaster Prevention , pp. 111 - 128Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
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