Modelling the Impact of Land Cover Changes on Flood Mitigation in the Upper Lužnice Basin

The study presented herein investigates the impact of simulated changes in land cover on rainfall-runoff conditions for the transboundary basin of the upper Lužnice. The HEC-HMS hydrological model was chosen for these simulations. Scenario models were used to simulate the impact of modifications in basin land cover with individual scenarios reflecting ground cover changes. The years 1990 and 2000, which are available in the CORINE Landcover database, were chosen as variants of river basin land cover. In addition, two theoretical versions of possible extreme variants in fundamental land cover changes - the conversion from agricultural land to grassland and the forestation of the river basin, with the exception of roads and bodies of water - were also included.

Single day rainfall totals with a recurrence period of 10, 20, 50 and 100 years were selected to calculate the volume of runoff and culmination discharge. These results demonstrate a clear decrease in the degree of impact of land cover structure on runoff conditions, increasing with the magnitude of precipitation.