Assessing the effects of land use on floods in the Meuse and Oder catchment

Recently, dramatic flooding occurred in several regions of the world. To investigate the causes of the flooding and the influence of land use, soil characteristics and antecedent catchment moisture conditions, the distributed catchment model LISFLOOD has been developed. LISFLOOD simulates runoff in large river basins. Two transnational European river basins are used to test and validate the model: the Meuse catchment (France, Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands) and the Oder basin (The Czech Republic, Poland and Germany). In the Meuse and Oder catchment, land use change information over the past 200 years is processed at the moment. The LISFLOOD simulation model is used to simulate the effects of these land use changes on floods. Some influences of land use and vegetation on the water balance are clear, such as the changing vegetation cover (leaf area index) which will influence evapotranspiration. However, not so much is known about the influences of vegetation on soil properties, which influence infiltration, soil water redistribution, throughflow and groundwater recharge. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.