Ronny Berndtsson
Professor, Dep Director, MECW Dep Scientific Coordinator
Water erosion modeling using fractal rainfall disaggregation- a study in semiarid Tunisia
Author
Summary, in English
different homogeneous rainfall subgroups are closely related to the predominant convective and frontal rainfall types.
The comparison illustrated important similarities between the maximum 15-min and the daily rainfall data.
The above findings were an incentive to explore the multiplicative properties of a 4-year rainfall time series. The time series showed scaling behavior for time scales up to 100 min that coincides with the most active erosion process time scale. Moreover, the temporal structure of rainfall was reproduced using a disaggregation model (Olsson, 1998). The observed and generated rainfall time series displayed several similar characteristics. This allowed the reproduction of erosivity for erosive rainfall events longer than 45 minutes. The erosion modeling was performed using the USLE/GIS approach. Maps of observed and generated spatial erosion distribution were combined with the Masson’s and Wischmeier-Smith’s erosion limit intervals. According to the above, the potential of rainfall scaling-based approaches to predict water erosion levels in semiarid areas seems promising. Using this approach may help soil and water authorities in semiarid areas to better manage soil erosion problems.
Department/s
- Division of Water Resources Engineering
Publishing year
2009
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation
Publisher
Lund University (Media-Tryck)
Topic
- Water Engineering
Keywords
- reservoir siltation
- regionalization
- fractal analysis
- Atlasic mountain range
- erosive events
- semiarid area
- soil loss
- Tunisia.
Status
Published
Project
- The Middle East in the Contemporary World (MECW)
Research group
- Water Resources Engineering
Supervisor
- Ronny Berndtsson
Defence date
12 June 2009
Defence time
13:00
Defence place
V building
Opponent
- Robin Clarke (professor)