The Poyang Lake is the largest fresh water lake in China, of which the vast area is about 39955 km. The Poyang Lake Area, on the other hand, is the place where floods often occur. In order to reduce the impact and damage of floods on the lives and properties of people living in the Poyang Lake Area, the authors have developed a Geographical Information System for preventing and controlling floo...

Usually, various kinds of floods are distinguished based on the origin or on the main processes. Basically, the cause of the flood can be overflow over the banks of the main channel, direct runoff or failure of a levee or other structure. Flash floods are typical of steep beds and / or high intensity rainfalls. In mountain areas, they can be associated to debris flows or highly concentrated bed...

Evidence is presented to show that there is a growing disparity between public perception and scientific evidence relating to the causes of floods, their impacts, and the benefits of mitigation measures. It is suggested that this disparity has arisen through the extensive promotion of certain land uses and engineering interventions by vested interest groups in the absence of any effective disse...

Jökulhlaup (glacial outburst floods) are caused by subglacial geothermal activity melting overlying ice, or by draining of ice-dammed lakes. They pose a recurring hazard along Iceland’s south coast where volcano-glacial interactions create often unpredictable, high-magnitude floods. Gathering information about past floods is crucial for projecting findings to present day scenarios and developin...

Floods are the most common natural disaster in both developed and developing countries, and they are occasionally of devastating impact, as the floods in China in 1959 and Bangladesh in 1974 and the tsunami in Southeast Asia in December 2004 show (1). Their impacts on health vary between populations for reasons relating to population vulnerability and type of flood event (2–5). Under future cli...

Although regional climates throughout much of the world appear to have become more arid in late Cenozoic time, sedimentation rates, and therefore presumably erosion rates, have increased. For sustained erosion of elevated terrain, at least where glaciers are not the major erosive agent, rivers must incise. Therefore bed-load transport by rivers should be a rate-limiting process in erosion. Theo...

Flash floods are one of the most dangerous weather-related natural disasters in the world. These events develop less than six hours after a rainfall event and create hazardous situations for people and extensive damage to property. It is critical for flash flood conditions to be warned of in a timely manner to minimize impacts. There is currently a knowledge gap between flood experts and the ge...

Urban floods are linked to patterns of land use, specifically urban sprawl. Since the 1980s, government-led new districts are sweeping across China, which account for many of the floods events. Focuses of urbanization impact on floods are extending gradually from hydraulic channels, to imperviousness ratio, to imperviousness pattern in urban areas or urbanized basins. Thus, the paper aims to ex...

Global warming-induced extreme climatic changes have increased the frequency of severe typhoons bringing heavy rains; this has considerably affected the stability of the forest ecosystems. Since the Taiwan 921 earthquake occurred in 21 September 1999, the mountain geology of the Island of Taiwan has become unstable and typhoon-induced floods and mudslides have changed the topography and geomorp...

A growing body of research argues that early adverse experiences have lasting effects not only on later health outcomes, but also on human capital accumulation. In this paper, I investigate the persistent effect of negative shocks early in life on children’s health and cognitive outcomes, and explore whether shocks at certain periods matter more than others. I exploit the geographic intensity o...