Search

The flood history of the transboundary Moselle River has so far not been analysed at the watershed scale. This study is based on a large collection of historical archives in hydrology dating to the beginning of the instrumental period. Many valuable archives are made available by the authors but data are discontinuous and heterogeneous. We describe homogenization and reconstruction methods leading to an original flood dataset covering the entire Moselle basin over the last two centuries. The flood series show that the basin is predominantly affected by oceanic floods that mostly occur in winter and that severe flooding generally affects the entire basin. A flood frequency analysis shows that the series are stationary and that flood quantiles obtained with short measured record series and reconstructed series are quite similar. However, although long historical series give robustness to the frequency analyses they also highlight bias and uncertainties related to sampling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Available data from nearby gauging stations can provide a great source of hydrometric information that is potentially transferable to an ungauged site. Furthermore, streamflow measurements may even be available for the ungauged site. This paper explores the potential of four distance-based regionalization methods to simulate daily hydrographs at almost ungauged pollution-control sites. Two methods use only the hydrological information provided by neighbouring catchments; the other two are new regionalization methods parameterized with a limited number of streamflow data available at the site of interest. Based on a network of 149 streamgauges and 21 pollution-control sites located in the Upper Rhine-Meuse area, the comparative assessment demonstrates the benefit of making available point streamflow measurements at the location of interest for improving quantitative streamflow prediction. The advantage is moderate for the prediction of flow types (stormflow, recession flow, baseflow) and pulse shape (duration of rising limb and falling limb). Editor Z.W. Kundzewicz; Associate editor A. Viglione [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]