TY - JOUR

T1 - Does soil compaction increase floods?

T2 - A review

AU - Alaoui, Abdallah

AU - Rogger, Magdalena

AU - Peth, Stephan

AU - Blöschl, Günter

N1 - Funding Information: The present work was developed within the framework of the Panta Rhei Research Initiative of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) as a contribution of the Working Groups ‘‘Understanding Flood Changes’’ and ‘‘Changes in Flood Risk.’’ Funding was partly provided by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF projects I 3174-N29 and P 23723-N21), the SYSTEMRISK project (EU grant 676027) and the European Research Council, Flood Change project (ERC advanced grant 291152). We also would like to thank the handling editor as well as the three reviewers for their constructive comments which considerably improved this paper.

PY - 2018/2

Y1 - 2018/2

N2 - Europe has experienced a series of major floods in the past years which suggests that flood magnitudes may have increased. Land degradation due to soil compaction from crop farming or grazing intensification is one of the potential drivers of this increase. A literature review suggests that most of the experimental evidence was generated at plot and hillslope scales. At larger scales, most studies are based on models. There are three ways in which soil compaction affects floods at the catchment scale: (i) through an increase in the area affected by soil compaction; (ii) by exacerbating the effects of changes in rainfall, especially for highly degraded soils; and (iii) when soil compaction coincides with soils characterized by a fine texture and a low infiltration capacity. We suggest that future research should focus on better synthesising past research on soil compaction and runoff, tailored field experiments to obtain a mechanistic understanding of the coupled mechanical and hydraulic processes, new mapping methods of soil compaction that combine mechanical and remote sensing approaches, and an effort to bridge all disciplines relevant to soil compaction effects on floods.

AB - Europe has experienced a series of major floods in the past years which suggests that flood magnitudes may have increased. Land degradation due to soil compaction from crop farming or grazing intensification is one of the potential drivers of this increase. A literature review suggests that most of the experimental evidence was generated at plot and hillslope scales. At larger scales, most studies are based on models. There are three ways in which soil compaction affects floods at the catchment scale: (i) through an increase in the area affected by soil compaction; (ii) by exacerbating the effects of changes in rainfall, especially for highly degraded soils; and (iii) when soil compaction coincides with soils characterized by a fine texture and a low infiltration capacity. We suggest that future research should focus on better synthesising past research on soil compaction and runoff, tailored field experiments to obtain a mechanistic understanding of the coupled mechanical and hydraulic processes, new mapping methods of soil compaction that combine mechanical and remote sensing approaches, and an effort to bridge all disciplines relevant to soil compaction effects on floods.

KW - Soil compaction

KW - Floods

KW - Land use changes

KW - Soil hydrology

KW - Upscaling flow processes

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85039798948&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.12.052

DO - 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.12.052

M3 - Review article

VL - 557

SP - 631

EP - 642

JO - Journal of hydrology

JF - Journal of hydrology

SN - 0022-1694

ER -