Abstract
Climate change in Europe is often manifested in the increasing frequency of extreme weather phenomena like storms, intensive rains, and floods. For the period 2000–2009, the highest number of severe floods in Southeastern Europe was registered in Romania (30), Greece (14), and Bulgaria (11). The EM-DAT database (CRED 2012) includes 13 major floods in Bulgaria for 1900–2011. Eleven of them occurred between 2000 and 2009, 1.2 cases per year, a significant increase compared to the average number of 0.1 cases for the past 111 years, mainly due to the extremely wet year 2005. A typical mountain area strongly affected by extreme weather is the upper Malki Iskar River basin on the northern slopes of the Etropolska Stara Planina. The chapter analyses the influence of intense rainfalls (on the examples of events between 1995–2005 and in 2007) on peak river flows and flood hazard, the role of topography in the spatial distribution of rainfall in the basin, and the passage rate of flood waves; identifies critical areas and settlements; and recommends risk mitigation measures. The kinematic runoff and erosion model (KINEROS) was used to simulate the influence of rainfall of different intensity and quantity on peak flow during storm events. The findings allow us to assess flood hazard in the river basin for possible future climate and land use/cover changes and propose management measures directed at reducing flood risk.
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Acknowledgements
This investigation was carried out in the framework of the research project ‘Implementation of the KINEROS model for estimation of the flood-prone territories in the Malki Iskar River Basin,’ funded by the Ministry of Crisis Management.
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Nikolova, M., Nedkov, S., Nikolov, V. (2013). Flood Hazard in Bulgaria: Case Study of Etropolska Stara Planina. In: Loczy, D. (eds) Geomorphological impacts of extreme weather. Springer Geography. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6301-2_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6301-2_12
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