The relative importance of antecedent soil moisture and precipitation in flood generation in the middle and lower Yangtze River basin

Abstract

Floods have caused severe environmental and socioeconomic losses worldwide in human history and are projected to exacerbate due to climate change. Many floods are caused by heavy rainfall with highly saturated soil; however, the relative importance of rainfall and antecedent soil moisture and how it changes from place to place has not been fully understood. Here we examined annual floods from more than 200 hydrological stations in the middle and lower Yangtze River basin. Our results indicate that the dominant factor in flood generation shifts from rainfall to antecedent soil moisture with the increase in watershed area. The ratio of the relative importance of antecedent soil moisture and daily rainfall (SPR) is positively correlated with topographic wetness index and has a negative correlation with the magnitude of annual floods. This linkage between watershed characteristics that are easy to measure and the dominant flood-generation mechanism provides a framework to quantitatively estimate potential flood risk in ungauged watersheds in the middle and lower Yangtze River basin.