Linking landslide susceptibility to sediment yield at regional scale: application to Romania

It is generally accepted that catchment sediment yield (SY, t km− 2 y− 1) can be strongly influenced by landsliding. Nevertheless, due to data requirements, only few studies investigated this effect at a regional scale. The objective of this study is therefore to explore the potential of a landslide susceptibility map for explaining the spatial variation of SY in Romania. We selected 133 catchments in Romania for which SY was measured during a period of at least 10 years. For each catchment, we derived a variety of proxies that potentially explain SY, including several indicators of landslide occurrence. The latter were derived from a published landslide susceptibility map. Results show that SY is significantly correlated with mean landslide susceptibility (r2 = 0.30). Estimates of average sheet and rill erosion rates showed a much weaker correlation with SY (r2 = 0.06). Further analyses showed that the strong correlation between SY and landslide susceptibility is mainly attributed to regional variations in lithology and seismicity. Especially the latter may play a crucial role in understanding denudation rates at regional scales, e.g. by facilitating the occurrence of landslides. Using landslide proxies that also account for sediment connectivity did not result in stronger correlations. Overall, our results show that landslide susceptibility maps can be a highly useful tool to predict SY at regional scales, provided that they incorporate all relevant factors. © 2016 Elsevier B.V

A DATABASE DESIGN OF MAJOR PAST FLOOD EVENTS IN ROMANIA FROM NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL INVENTORIES

Floods are one of the most significant natural hazards in Romania, causing losses of human lives and important damages to buildings and infrastructure. Romania is recognized among the most flood prone European countries. This work was conducted in the framework of the VULMIN project, aiming to extract the available key indicators of major and historical flood events in Romania, as a basis for better understanding the patterns of socio-economic vulnerability to floods at regional and national scales and of the adaptive capacity of living areas along the main rivers of this country. The existing databases on flood records at global (e.g. EM-DAT International Disaster Database, Dartmouth Flood Observatory, GLIDE database) and national level (the preliminary flood risk assessment conducted within the framework of the EU Flood Directive), research projects (e.g. Hydrate, Danube Flood Risk) and the available literature have been explored to collect indicators of intensity, magnitude, extent and impacts associated to past major flood events recorded in Romania. Starting from the scientific and reporting needs, taking into account the reliable information found in the documented databases, the main attributes of floods and flash-floods events has been embedded into a proposed database to be developed in the project, which may be useful for further analyses related to hydrological changes associated to climate change