A wide variety of processes controls the time of occurrence, duration, extent, and severity of river floods. Classifying flood events by their causative processes may assist in enhancing the accuracy of local and regional flood frequency estimates and support the detection and interpretation of any changes in flood occurrence and magnitudes. This paper provides a critical review of existing causative classifications of instrumental and preinstrumental series of flood events, discusses their validity and applications, and identifies opportunities for moving toward more comprehensive approaches. So far no unified definition of causative mechanisms of flood events exists. Existing frameworks for classification of instrumental and preinstrumental series of flood events adopt different perspectives: hydroclimatic (large‐scale circulation patterns and atmospheric state at the time of the event), hydrological (catchment scale precipitation patterns and antecedent catchment state), and hydrograph‐based (indirectly considering generating mechanisms through their effects on hydrograph characteristics). All of these approaches intend to capture the flood generating mechanisms and are useful for characterizing the flood processes at various spatial and temporal scales. However, uncertainty analyses with respect to indicators, classification methods, and data to assess the robustness of the classification are rarely performed which limits the transferability across different geographic regions. It is argued that more rigorous testing is needed. There are opportunities for extending classification methods to include indicators of space–time dynamics of rainfall, antecedent wetness, and routing effects, which will make the classification schemes even more useful for understanding and estimating floods.This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Water Extremes Science of Water > Hydrological Processes Science of Water > Methods

In this paper, the question of how the interpolation of precipitation in space by using various spatial gauge densities affects the rainfall–runoff model discharge if all other input variables are kept constant is investigated. The main focus was on the peak flows. This was done by using a physically based model as the reference with a reconstructed spatially variable precipitation model and a conceptual model calibrated to match the reference model's output as closely as possible. Both models were run with distributed and lumped inputs. Results showed that all considered interpolation methods resulted in the underestimation of the total precipitation volume and that the underestimation was directly proportional to the precipitation amount. More importantly, the underestimation of peaks was very severe for low observation densities and disappeared only for very high-density precipitation observation networks. This result was confirmed by using observed precipitation with different observation densities. Model runoffs showed worse performance for their highest discharges. Using lumped inputs for the models showed deteriorating performance for peak flows as well, even when using simulated precipitation.

We dealt with a rather frequent and difficult situation while modelling extreme floods, namely, model output uncertainty in data sparse regions. A historical extreme flood event was chosen to illustrate the challenges involved. Our aim was to understand what the causes might have been and specifically to show how input and model parameter uncertainties affect the output. For this purpose, a conceptual model was calibrated and validated with recent data rich time period. Resulting model parameters were used to model the historical event which subsequently resulted in a rather poor hydrograph. Due to the bad model performance, a spatial simulation technique was used to invert the model for precipitation. Constraints, such as taking the precipitation values at historical observation locations in to account, with correct spatial structures and following the observed regional distributions were used to generate realistic precipitation fields. Results showed that the inverted precipitation improved the performance significantly even when using many different model parameters. We conclude that while modelling in data sparse conditions both model input and parameter uncertainties have to be dealt with simultaneously to obtain meaningful results.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is pivotal in the terrestrial water cycle in subhumid and tropical regions. In the water cycle, the contribution of plant transpiration can be distinctively more significant than soil evaporation. The seasonal dynamics of plant phenology, commonly represented as the vegetation attribute leaf area index (LAI), closely correlates with actual ET (AET). Hence, addressing the reciprocal LAI–AET interaction is essential for practitioners and researchers to comprehensively quantify the hydrological processes in water resources management, particularly in the perennially vegetated regions of West Africa. However, due to a lack of field measurements, evaluation of the LAI–AET interaction still remains challenging. Hence, our study aims to improve the understanding of the role of the LAI in AET estimation by investigating characteristic regions of West Africa. We set up ecohydrological models (using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool for the tropics – SWAT-T) for two homogeneous land cover types (forest and grassland) to guarantee the representativeness of field measurements for the LAI and AET. We apply different potential ET methods (the Hargreaves; Penman–Monteith – PET-PM; and Priestley–Taylor methods) to evaluate the LAI–AET interaction in SWAT-T. Further, the elementary effects method quantifies the parameter sensitivity for 27 relevant LAI–AET parameters. The comprehensive parameter set is then optimized using the shuffled complex evolution algorithm. Finally, we apply a benchmarking test to assess the performance of SWAT-T with respect to the simulation of AET and to determine the relevance of detailed LAI modeling. The results show that SWAT-T is capable of accurately predicting the LAI and AET at the footprint scale. While all three PET methods facilitate adequate modeling of the LAI and AET, the PET-PM technique outperforms the other methods for AET, independent of the land cover type. Moreover, the benchmarking highlights that, if it only accounts for the LAI but disregards AET data, an optimization process's prediction of AET still yields an adequate performance with SWAT-T for all PET methods and land cover types. Our findings demonstrate that the significance of detailed LAI modeling for the AET estimation is more pronounced in the forested than in the grassland region.

In this paper the question of how interpolation of precipitation in space by using various spatial gauge densities affects the rainfall-runoff model discharge if all other input variables are kept constant is investigated. This was done using a physically-based model as the reference with a reconstructed spatially variable precipitation and a conceptual model calibrated to match the reference model output. Both models were run with distributed and lumped inputs. Results showed that all considered interpolation methods resulted in underestimation of the total precipitation volume and that the underestimation was directly proportional to the amount. The underestimation was very severe for low observation densities and disappeared only for very high density precipitation observation networks. This result was confirmed by using observed precipitation with different observation densities. Model runoffs showed worse performance for their highest discharges. Using lumped inputs for the models showed deteriorating performance for peak flows as well even when using simulated precipitation.

Evapotranspiration (ET) plays a pivotal role in the terrestrial water cycle in sub-humid and tropical regions. Thereby, the contribution of plant transpiration can be distinctively greater than the soil evaporation. The seasonal dynamics of plant phenology, e.g., commonly represented as the vegetation attribute leaf-area-index (LAI), closely correlates with actual ET (AET). Addressing the reciprocal LAI-AET interaction is hence essential for practitioners and researchers to comprehensively quantify the hydrological processes in water resources management, particularly in the perennially vegetated regions of Western Africa. However due to the lack of field measurements, the evaluation of the LAI-AET interaction still remains challenging. Hence, our study aims to improve the understanding of the role of LAI on the AET estimation with the investigation of characteristic regions of Western Africa. We setup eco-hydrological models (SWAT-T) for two homogeneous land cover types (forest and grassland) to guarantee the representativeness of field measurements for LAI and AET. To evaluate the LAI-AET interaction in SWAT-T, we apply different potential ET methods (Hargreaves, Penman-Monteith (PET-PM), Priestley-Taylor). Further, the parameter sensitivity for 27 relevant LAI-AET parameters is quantified with the elementary effects method. The comprehensive parameter set is then optimized using the Shuffled-Complex-Evolution algorithm. Finally, we apply a benchmark test to assess the performance of SWAT-T to simulate AET and to determine the relevance of a detailed LAI modelling. The results show that SWAT-T is capable to accurately predict LAI and AET on the footprint scale. While all three PET methods facilitate an adequate modelling of LAI and AET, PET-PM outperforms the methods for AET independent of the land cover type. Moreover, the benchmarking highlights that if an optimization process only accounts for LAI but disregards AET data, its prediction of AET still yields an adequate performance with SWAT-T for all PET methods and land cover types. Our findings demonstrate that the significance of a detailed LAI modelling on the AET estimation is more pronounced in the forested than in the grassland region.