Multiple time scales of fluvial processes—theory and applications

Fluvial processes comprise water flow,sediment transport and bed evolution,which normally feature distinct time scales.The time scales of sediment transport and bed deformation relative to the flow essentially measure how fast sediment transport adapts to capacity region in line with local flow scenario and the bed deforms in comparison with the flow,which literally dictates if a capacity based and/or decoupled model is justified.This paper synthesizes the recently developed multiscale theory for sediment-laden flows over erodible bed,with bed load and suspended load transport,respectively.It is unravelled that bed load transport can adapt to capacity sufficiently rapidly even under highly unsteady flows and thus a capacity model is mostly applicable,whereas a non-capacity model is critical for suspended sediment because of the lower rate of adaptation to capacity.Physically coupled modelling is critical for fluvial processes characterized by rapid bed variation.Applications are outlined on very active bed load sediment transported by flash floods and landslide dam break floods.

Land use/cover change effects on floods with different return periods： a case study of Beijing, China

In this study, an approach integrating digital land use/cover change （LUCC） analysis, hydraulic model- ing and statistical methods was applied to quantify the effect of LUCC on floods in terms of inundation extent, flood arrival time and maximum water depth. The study took Beijing as an example and analyzed five specific floods with return periods of 20-year, 50-year, 100-year, 1000-year and 10000-year on the basis of LUCC over a nine-year period from 1996 to 2004. The analysis reveals that 1） during the period of analysis Beijing experienced unprecedented LUCC; 2） LUCC can affect inundation extent and flood arrival time, and floods with longer return periods are more influenced; 3） LUCC can affect maximum water depth and floods with shorter return periods are more influenced; and 4） LUCC is a major flood security stressor for Beijing. It warns that those cities having experienced rapid expansion during recent decades in China are in danger of more serious floods and recommends that their actual land use patterns should be carefully assessed considering flood security. This inte- grated approach is demonstrated to he a useful tool for joint assessment, planning and management of land and water.

MODELING AND PREDICTION CONCERNING TIME SERIES OF FLOOD/DROUGHT RUNS USING THE SELF-EXCITING THRESHOLD AUTOREGRESSIVE MODEL

When linear regressive models such as AR or ARMA model are used for fitting and predicting climatic time series,results are often not sufficiently good because nonlinear variations in the time series.In this paper, a nonlinear self-exciting threshold autoregressive(SETAR)model is applied to modeling and predicting the time series of flood/drought runs in Beijing,which were derived from the graded historical flood/drought records in the last 511 years(1470—1980).The results show that the modeling and predicting with the SETAR model are much better than that of the AR model.The latter can predict the flood/drought runs with a length only less than two years,while the formal can predict more than three-year length runs.This may be due to the fact that the SETAR model can renew the model according to the run-turning points in the process of predic- tion,though the time series is nonstationary.