GIS Evaluation of Erosion-Sedimentation Risk Caused by Extreme Convective Rainstorms: Case Study of the Stonávka River Catchment, Czech Republic

Abstract

Timeliness of erosion-sedimentation processes is evident at both local and global scale. In Central Europe, problems of landscape management are often discussed in the relation to rainfall-runoff phenomena and the resultant processes of soil erosion and sediment deposition. Nowadays, these issues are well elaborated theoretically and with the use of information technologies (IT) and geographical information systems (GIS) potential, the evaluation of predisposition of a given area to erosion is quite easy. IT and GIS offer the effective use of a wide range of erosion models. In this chapter, a USPED (Unit Stream Power based Erosion/Deposition) model (Mitasova et al. 1996) is applied to the analysis of a rainstorm event in June 2009 within the Stonávka River catchment, Czech Republic. In comparison to the well-known USLE (Wishmeier and Smith 1965, 1978) model and its newer versions, the USPED model is more suitable for the use at a catchment scale and besides erosion, it is also able to calculate the rate of deposition of eroded material. Because of the convective character of the causal rainfall, the Onstad-Foster’s equation (Onstad and Foster 1975) was used to derive the R factor describing an erosive effect of rainfall/surface runoff.