Soil characteristics of the Otava river basin and relations to floods

Abstract

The paper assesses the role of the river basin land cover in eliminating extreme precipitations. Its comprehensive approach involves assessment of significant soil characteristics of monitored soil types, subtypes, and classes in terms of potential water infiltration and retention and focuses on land use and relief slope and curvature. The main working method is an analysis of soil units, 1: 50 000 soil maps, and potential risks of degradation processes. We pay a specific attention to different methods of flood plains delimitation based on pedological, geological and geomorphological principles and their relations to peak overflow values during the 2002 flooding. The whole river basin is divided into three main zones - catchment, outflow, and inundation zones. Results are linked to individual sub-river basins and compared in terms of soil types representation in the form of triangle charts. The main output involves synthetic units of soilscapes showing such combinations of soil, substrate, relief, and land use characteristics that most contribute to studies of internal landscape differentiation in terms of natural risks like floods

land cover

soil type and class

infiltration

retention

soilscapes