Wouter Reinier Berghuijs


Last Name

Berghuijs

First Name

Wouter Reinier

ORCID

0000-0002-7447-0051

Organisational unit

Filters

2017 - 2019122020 - 20256
Reset filters

Search Results

Publications 1 - 10 of 18
  • Unanswered questions on the Budyko framework
    Item type: Other Journal Item
    Berghuijs, Wouter Reinier; Gnann, Sebastian J.; Woods, Ross A. (2020)
    Hydrological Processes
  • A Global Assessment of Runoff Sensitivity to Changes in Precipitation, Potential Evaporation, and Other Factors
    Item type: Journal Article
    Berghuijs, Wouter Reinier; Larsen, Joshua R.; van Emmerik, Tim H.M.; et al. (2017)
    Water Resources Research
  • Climate versus tectonics as controls on river profiles
    Item type: Other Journal Item
    Seybold, Hansjörg Florian; Berghuijs, Wouter Reinier; Prancevic, Jeffrey; et al. (2022)
    Nature
  • Groundwater shapes North American river floods
    Item type: Journal Article
    Berghuijs, Wouter Reinier; Slater, Louise J. (2023)
    Environmental Research Letters
    The importance of soil moisture in triggering river floods is increasingly recognized. However, soil moisture represents only a fraction of the water stored in the unsaturated zone. In contrast, groundwater from the deeper, saturated zone, may contribute a significant proportion of river flow, but its effects on flooding are poorly understood. Here we analyze hydroclimatic records of thousands of North American watersheds spanning 1981-2018 to show that baseflow (i.e. groundwater-sustained river flows) affects the magnitude of annual flooding at time scales from days to decades. Annual floods almost always arise through the co-occurrence of high precipitation (rainfall + snowmelt) and baseflow. Flood magnitudes are often more strongly related to variations in antecedent baseflow than antecedent soil moisture and short-term (⩽3-day) extreme precipitation. In addition, multi-decadal trends in flood magnitude and decadal flood variations tend to better align with groundwater storage and baseflow trends than with changing precipitation extremes and soil moisture. This reveals the importance of groundwater in shaping North American river floods and often decouples the spatial patterns of flood trends from those of shifting precipitation extremes and soil moisture.
  • Low-flow seasonality across Switzerland - Climatic drivers and the influence of landscape
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Floriancic, Marius; Berghuijs, Wouter Reinier; Molnar, Peter (2018)
  • Spatial Sensitivity of River Flooding to Changes in Climate and Land Cover Through Explainable AI
    Item type: Journal Article
    Slater, Louise; Coxon, Gemma; Brunner, Manuela; et al. (2024)
    Earth's Future
    Explaining the spatially variable impacts of flood-generating mechanisms is a longstanding challenge in hydrology, with increasing and decreasing temporal flood trends often found in close regional proximity. Here, we develop a machine learning-informed approach to unravel the drivers of seasonal flood magnitude and explain the spatial variability of their effects in a temperate climate. We employ 11 observed meteorological and land cover (LC) time series variables alongside 8 static catchment attributes to model flood magnitude in 1,268 catchments across Great Britain over four decades. We then perform a sensitivity analysis to assess how a 10% increase in precipitation, a 1°C rise in air temperature, or a 10 percentage point increase in urban or forest LC may affect flood magnitude in catchments with varying characteristics. Our simulations show that increasing precipitation and urbanization both tend to amplify flood magnitude significantly more in catchments with high baseflow contribution and low runoff ratio, which tend to have lower values of specific discharge on average. In contrast, rising air temperature (in the absence of changing precipitation) decreases flood magnitudes, with the largest effects in dry catchments with low baseflow index. Afforestation also tends to decrease floods more in catchments with low groundwater contribution, and in dry catchments in the summer. Our approach may be used to further disentangle the joint effects of multiple flood drivers in individual catchments.
  • Recent changes in extreme floods across multiple continents
    Item type: Journal Article
    Berghuijs, Wouter Reinier; Aalbers, Emma E.; Larsen, Joshua R.; et al. (2017)
    Environmental Research Letters
    Analyses of trends in observed floods often focus on relatively frequent events, whereas changes in rare floods are only studied for a small number of locations that have exceptionally long observational records. Understanding changes in rare floods is especially relevant as these events are often most damaging and influence the design of major structures. Here, we provide an assessment of changes in the largest flood events (~0.033 annual exceedance probability) observed during the period 1980−2009 for 1744 catchments located in Australia, Brazil, Europe and the United States. The occurrence of rare floods in spatial aggregate shows strong temporal variability and peaked around 1995. During the 30 year period, there are overall increases in both the frequency and magnitude of extreme floods. These increases are strongest in Europe and the United States, and weakest in Brazil and Australia. Physical causes of the reported short-term variability and longer-term changes in extreme floods currently remain elusive, because the key drivers vary between catchments. Nonetheless, this approach provides the basis for a more spatially representative assessment of changes in extreme flood occurrence.
  • The Relative Importance of Different Flood‐Generating Mechanisms Across Europe
    Item type: Journal Article
    Berghuijs, Wouter Reinier; Harrigan, Shaun; Molnar, Peter; et al. (2019)
    Water Resources Research
  • Spatial and temporal characteristics of low flows across Switzerland
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Floriancic, Marius; Berghuijs, Wouter Reinier; Molnar, Peter (2018)
    Geophysical Research Abstracts
Publications 1 - 10 of 18