Detecting the influence of land use changes on discharges and floods in the Meuse River Basin ? the predictive power of a ninety-year rainfall-runoff relation?
Résumé
The general agreement between the observed and simulated discharge records is good (Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency: 0.89?0.93), in particular flood volumes and the highest flood peaks are simulated well but the model has problems with the medium floods (shape and peak value). However, there are some systematic deviations between the observed and simulated discharges during specific periods. The simulation result could somewhat be improved by taking the historical land use into consideration. But the systematic overestimation of the discharge for the period 1933?1968 could not be attributed to observed changes in land use. It is concluded that the overall impact of land use changes in the Meuse basin is too small to be detected given the uncertainties in the available records.