Relationship of runoff, erosion and sediment yield to weather types in the Iberian Peninsula

doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2014.09.011

Geomorphology

Volume 228, 1 January 2015, Pages 372-381

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2014.09.011 Get rights and content

Highlights

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The relationships between WTs, precipitation, runoff and sediment yield are tested.
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Spatial variations in these relationships were detected according to WT.
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A few WTs, particularly W, SW and C, provide the largest amounts of precipitation.
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SW, NW and W WTs play an important role in runoff, erosion and sediment yield.

Abstract

Precipitation has been recognized as one of the main factors driving soil erosion and sediment yield (SY), and its spatial and temporal variability is recognized as one of the main reasons for spatial and temporal analyses of soil erosion variability. The weather types (WTs) approach classifies the continuum of atmospheric circulation into a small number of categories or types and has been proven a good indicator of the spatial and temporal variability of precipitation. Thus, the main objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between WTs, runoff, soil erosion (measured in plots), and sediment yield (measured in catchments) in different areas of the Iberian Peninsula (IP) with the aim of detecting spatial variations in these relationships. To this end, hydrological and sediment information covering the IP from several Spanish research teams has been combined, and related with daily WTs estimated by using the NMC/NCAR 40-Year Reanalysis Project. The results show that, in general, a few WTs (particularly westerly, southwesterly and cyclonic) provide the largest amounts of precipitation; and southwesterly, northwesterly and westerly WTs play an important role in runoff generation, erosion and sediment yield as they coincide with the wettest WTs. However, this study highlights the spatial variability of erosion and sediment yield in the IP according to WT, differentiating (1) areas under the influence of north and/or north-westerly flows (the north coast of Cantabria and inland central areas), (2) areas under the influence of westerly, southwesterly and cyclonic WTs (western and southwestern IP), (3) areas in which erosion and sediment yield are controlled by easterly flows (Mediterranean coastland), and (4) lastly, a transitional zone in the inland northeast Ebro catchment, where we detected a high variability in the effects of WTs on erosion. Overall results suggest that the use of WTs derived from observed atmospheric pressure patterns could be a useful tool for inclusion in future projections of the spatial variability of erosion and sediment yield, as models capture pressure fields reliably.

Introduction

Precipitation has been recognized as one of the main factors driving soil erosion for a long time (Wischmeier and Smith, 1958, Fournier, 1960), and soil erosion and sediment yield are the most important environmental problems worldwide (Bakker et al., 2007). The spatial and temporal distributions of soil erosion and sediment yield are difficult to assess because of high variability in precipitation on temporal and spatial scales, and this is particularly true in areas with a strongly contrasting seasonal rainfall regime and long history of human intervention, such as exists in the Mediterranean basin (Grove and Rackham, 2001).

Climate research has tried to analyze the variability of precipitation from several points of view, and among others, the weather types (WTs) seem to be one of the most promising. Basically, the WTs approach tries to categorize the continuum of atmospheric circulation into a small number of classes or types (Trigo and DaCamara, 2000), and it has been used extensively in different research areas: e.g., climatology, including droughts and precipitation patterns (Vicente-Serrano and López-Moreno, 2006, Fleig et al., 2011, Rust et al., 2013), temperature (Piotrowicz and Szlagor, 2013) and snow dynamics (López-Moreno and Vicente-Serrano, 2007, Biggs and Atkinson, 2011), air quality (Fraile et al., 2013, Vanos et al., 2014), hydrology and floods (Andrade et al., 2011, Pattison and Lane, 2012, Wilby and Quinn, 2013, Foulds et al., 2014), agriculture (Lorenzo et al., 2013, Sturman and Quenol, 2013), and wildfire occurrence (Rivas-Soriano et al., 2013, Trigo et al., 2013). To our knowledge, little research has been conducted into the relationships between WTs and soil degradation by rainfall (e.g., Wilby et al., 1997, Fernández-Raga et al., 2010, Nadal-Romero et al., 2014), with promising results from these authors, who have identified different atmospheric patterns (i.e., WTs) relating to geomorphological processes.

Precipitation in the IP exhibits high variability on spatial and temporal scales (de Castro et al., 2005, González-Hidalgo et al., 2011), and previous research has demonstrated the usefulness of the WT approach in determining its spatial and temporal distribution (Trigo and DaCamara, 2000, Cortesi et al., 2013, Cortesi et al., 2014). These studies have shown that high amounts of monthly, seasonal, and annual precipitation are caused by a few WTs; that precipitation depends on more WTs to the west than to the east of the IP; and lastly, they found that the most prominent WTs for generating rainfall vary from region to region and particularly along the Mediterranean coastland, the precipitation depends on only a few WTs that usually affect small areas.

Soil degradation in the IP has been the subject of a great deal of research over the last 30 years (see review in García-Ruiz and López-Bermúdez, 2009), and the results show a high spatial and temporal variability of soil erosion processes (at plot level) and sediment yield (at catchment level), but the global view of this variability is not clear. Thus, this paper sets out to analyze the spatial variability of soil degradation in the IP from soil erosion and sediment yield through their relationships with the WTs. This was done by collecting data from various study areas and identifying the role played by different WTs in soil degradation.

In the IP, the WTs and precipitation exhibit a clear spatial pattern (Cortesi et al., 2013); thus in this study we analyze two hypotheses: (i) the existence of links between WTs and runoff, soil erosion, and sediment yield in the IP, and (ii) the emergence of spatial patterns in WTs, erosion, and sediment yield in the IP according to the spatial distribution of the relationship between WTs and precipitation.

Section snippets

Study area

The IP extends over 582,000 km² and is located in the extreme southwest of Europe. This location at the transition of the subtropical fringe makes it particularly interesting from a climatic point of view, not only because of its latitudinal position in the subtropical transition areas, but also because it is surrounded by two completely different water masses: the Atlantic Ocean in the north, west and southwest, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south and east. It is also interesting to note

Precipitation and WTs

The results of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test showed no significant statistical differences (p < 0.05) between the frequency distribution of precipitation (in percentages) according to WTs in long-term records from the AEMet stations and precipitation distribution recorded at the study sites during the research periods (these data are not shown in the manuscript). These analyses basically answered two main questions: (i) they corroborated the strong association between WTs and precipitation patterns

Discussion

The inherent spatial variability of precipitation is a strong drawback to understanding spatial variability of soil degradation in the IP and to developing an efficient strategy to combat soil erosion and SY under scenarios of global climate change; thus, no global solution could be found, as the processes analyzed vary in both time and space. We have approached this problem in the IP by trying to identify the relationships between WTs and soil degradation (by means of soil erosion and sediment

Conclusions

In the Iberian Peninsula we have proved the relationships between WTs, precipitation, runoff, soil erosion, and sediment yield and have detected the spatial differences that help to explain the nature of the spatial variability of soil degradation processes.

High percentages of precipitation occurred during the three rainiest WTs (NW, SW, and C), being (in general) cyclonic and westerly types. Moreover, most of the runoff and erosion or sediment yields were generated by westerly types (namely

Acknowledgements

Support for this research was provided by the projects: HIDROCAES (CGL2011-27574-C02-01 and 02), INDICA (CGL2011-27753-CO2-01 and 02), and CGL2010-21754-C02-01 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competition and FSE. Thanks to the AEMeT for the rainfall data, and to Roberto Serrano for his helpful assistance in the precipitation analysis. Thanks to the reviewers and the editor for their detailed work to improve this article. E.

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Relationship of runoff, erosion and sediment yield to weather types in the Iberian Peninsula

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Study area

Precipitation and WTs

Discussion

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Glob. Planet. Chang.

Catena

Phys. Chem. Earth

Atmos. Res.

Agric. Ecosyst. Environ.

Atmos. Res.

Atmos. Res.

Catena

Geomorphology

Environ. Pollut.

J. Hydrol.

Catena

Large-scale atmospheric dynamics of the wet winter 2009–2010 and its impact on hydrology in Portugal

Clim. Res.

The response of soil erosion and sediment export to land-use change in four areas of Europe. The importance of landscape pattern

Geomorphology

A characterization of climate variability and trends in hydrological extremes in the Severn Uplands

Int. J. Climatol.

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Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

Weather types and spatial variability of precipitation in the Iberian Peninsula

Int. J. Climatol.

El clima de España: pasado, presente y escenarios de clima para el siglo XXI

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Int. J. Climatol.

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La Erosión del Suelo en España

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Earth Surf. Process. Landf.

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Int. J. Climatol.

The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History