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Reliability of rainfall kinetic power–intensity relationships
Author(s) -
Carollo Francesco Giuseppe,
Ferro Vito,
Serio Maria Angela
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
hydrological processes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.222
H-Index - 161
eISSN - 1099-1085
pISSN - 0885-6087
DOI - 10.1002/hyp.11099
Subject(s) - disdrometer , intensity (physics) , environmental science , kinetic energy , universal soil loss equation , reliability (semiconductor) , erosion , hydrology (agriculture) , power (physics) , soil loss , soil science , mathematics , meteorology , physics , geology , precipitation , geotechnical engineering , thermodynamics , paleontology , quantum mechanics , rain gauge
Abstract The rainfall erosivity plays a fundamental role in water soil erosion processes and it can be expressed by its kinetic power. At first in this paper, the raindrop‐size distributions measured, in the period June 2006–March 2014, by an optical disdrometer installed at the Department of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences of University of Palermo are aggregated into rainfall intensity classes, having different ranges, and the measured kinetic power values are determined. Measured kinetic power values are initially used for testing the applicability of the kinetic power‐rainfall intensity relationships proposed by Wischmeier and Smith ([Wischmeier, W. H., 1978]), used in Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), Brown and Foster ([Brown, L. C., 1987]) (RUSLE), and McGregor et al. ([McGregor, K. C., 1995]) (RUSLE2). Then, the reliability of a theoretical relationship for estimating the kinetic power by rainfall intensity and median volume diameter is verified. Finally, using the literature available datasets, corresponding to measurements carried out by different techniques and in different geographical sites, the analysis demonstrated that the rainfall intensity is not sufficient to determine the rainfall kinetic power. On the contrary, the theoretically deduced relationship allows to reproduce adequately the kinetic power of all available datasets, demonstrating that the knowledge of both rainfall intensity and median volume diameter allows a reliable estimate of the rainfall erosivity.