Enso floods on river ecosystems: catastrophes or myths?

NEIFF, J.J.; MENDIONDO EM,; DEPETTRIS CA,

River Flood Defence

Herkules Verlag Kassel

Lugar: Kassel; Año: 2000; p. 15 - 32

Very extreme floods from 38000 to 62000 m3s-1, draining a 2 million km2 catchment area and with severe inundation downstream of Paraguay-Parana Confluence in South America, are related to El Niño Southern Oscillation ?ENSO-. This paper links ENSO?s floods to natural ecosystems, e.g. the flood-plain patchiness, the biodiversity and the ecosystem structure. River behaviour may be described with parameters as frequency, intensity, tension, regularity, amplitude and seasonality. According to the 20th century river time series, noteworthy fluvial changes are related to extreme floods through actual time. Nevertheless, the ecosystem recovers itself by means of resilience assessed by remote sensing. This lack of understanding determined enormous economic losses on ecosystems impacted by ENSO´s floods along the 1983-98 period reaching to catastrophes and myths. Although flood-plain ecosystems are often well adapted to ENSO?s floods, their risk analysis patch assembles must be properly addressed. Therefore, adaptations to land use are discussed, regarding an attitude?s change of society in front of river behaviour to cope with ENSO?s flood myths.