A case study of land cover change (1950–2003) and runoff in a Mediterranean catchment

Dennis Fox (1) , Emmanuelle Witz , Violaine Blanc , Cécile Soulié , Marc Penalver-Navarro , Alain Dervieux (2)

1 ESPACE - Études des Structures, des Processus d’Adaptation et des Changements de l’Espace
2 TROPICS - Program transformations for scientific computing

Mediterranean environments have been subject to major land cover change since the end of the second world war. Housing, agricultural activities, forests, green spaces and other land uses have shifted due to urbanisation and tourism. These changes influence runoff, and municipal authorities often cannot estimate the net impact of complex land cover transitions. During this period, elected representatives have become increasingly sensitive to the risks of flooding and have implemented a number of channel management strategies. The main objective of this case study was to analyse the impact of land cover change on total storm runoff between 1950 and 2003 in a Mediterranean catchment near St Tropez, France. A secondary objective was to compare these changes to the impacts of channel management on bankfull discharge. Aerial photographs were used to classify land cover in 3 urban categories, vineyards and bare soil, forests, and green spaces. Stream discharge was estimated using a distributed event based total runoff approach. After validating the model for a large winter event (114 mm) for 1982, runoff was calculated for the same event for 1950 and 2003. Land cover changes occurred mainly in the alluvial plain area. Total gauge catchment urban area increased from 30.

Domaines: Sciences de l'environnement; Environnement et Société

Dennis Fox, Emmanuelle Witz, Violaine Blanc, Cécile Soulié, Marc Penalver-Navarro, et al.. A case study of land cover change (1950–2003) and runoff in a Mediterranean catchment. Applied Geography, 2012, 32 (2), pp.810-821. ⟨10.1016/j.apgeog.2011.07.007⟩. ⟨hal-02572197⟩