Assessment of Western Caucasus flood hazard

M. M. Gyaurgieva

News of the Kabardin-Balkar scientific center of RAS, no. 1 (2021), pp. 93-102

Résumé

The Western Caucasus, due to its physical and geographical features, is characterized by the wide development of dangerous natural processes: snow avalanches, mudflows, landslides, rockslides, etc. Flood processes are not an exception from this list. The consequences of the manifestation of these processes ultimately lead to the transformation of mountain landscapes and, as a consequence, a decrease in their resistance to anthropogenic impact. As a result, part of the land passes from the category of potentially safe territories to the category of hazardous ones with limited economic activity up to complete withdrawal from land use. Therefore, the assessment of the territory's exposure to hazardous natural processes is an urgent and priority task for mountainous areas. The work is a part of comprehensive research carried out at the Center for Geographical Research of the Kabardino-Balkarian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences to study hazardous exogenous processes. The paper provides a general description of the Bolshaya and Malaya Laba and Urup river basins from the point of view of flood hazard, presents and analyzes the facts of flood processes that took place in the considered basins in 2019. A digital visualization of the monitoring results was performed: a set of digital medium-scale flood hazard maps with a general cadastre was compiled.

Détail

Keywords: hazardous natural processes, exposure, floods, flooding, monitoring, climatic characteristics, precipitation.