[1] Microtopography, consisting of small‐scale excursions in the elevation of the land surface on millimeter to centimeter scales, is ubiquitous on hillslopes, but its effects are rarely incorporated into hydrological analyses of rainfall‐runoff partitioning. To progress toward a hydrological theory that accounts for microtopography, two research questions are considered: (1) Does microtopograp...

This paper1 evaluates the reliability of modeling in the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report (DECR) where global circulation (or climate) simulations were used to forecast future extremes of temperatures, rainfall and soil moisture. The DECR provided the Australian government with an assessment of the likely future change in the extent and frequency of drought resulting from anthropogenic ...

Human-induced alteration of the natural flow regime is a major threat to freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity. The effects of hydrological alteration on the structural and functional attributes of riverine communities are expected to be multiple and complex, and they may not be described easily by a single model. Based on existing knowledge of key hydrological and ecological attributes, we ex...

A hydrological model for real time flood forecasting to Civil Protection services requires reliability and rapidity. At present, computational capabilities overcome the rapidity needs even when a fully distributed hydrological model is adopted for a large river catchment as the Upper Po river basin closed at Ponte Becca (nearly 40 000 km2). This approach allows simulating the whole domain and o...

Planning for sustainable cities is a complex process addressing the fundamental areas of economic, environmental and socially-equitable sustainability. This chapter focuses on the environmental area, with theories, models, and applications illustrating possible spatial configurations of a green infrastructure to support ecological and physical processes in the built environment including: hydro...

Increasingly research suggests that the level of internal regulation of function in agroecosystems is largely dependent on the level of plant and animal biodiversity present. In agroecosystems, biodiversity performs a variety of ecological services beyond the production of food, including recycling of nutrients, regulation of microclimate and local hydrological processes, suppression of undesir...

Traditional flood control systems always have a conflict with natural ones, i.e., rivers in cities are usually straight and smooth, whereas natural ones are according to ecological mechanisms. Social and economic developments in the modern world require a new system combining ecological needs and traditional flood control system. Ecological flood control systems were put forward and defined as ...

Decision support tools that aim to assist efficient integrated water resources management should integrate the multiple, interdependent uses of water. There exist, however, few models that assess the trade-offs between environmental and socio-economic impacts of water management changes in an integrated framework. This paper presents a model that integrates hydrological, ecological and economic...