Topic V - Geo-hazard > V-3-Paleofloods – Tribute to Bruno Wilhelm

Conveners

1. William Rapuc (EDYTEM, CNRS, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, France & Department of Earth Sciences, Durham University, UK)
2. Charline Giguet-Covex (EDYTEM, CNRS, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, France)
3. Lothar Schulte (ICREA Academia Researcher, Department of Physical Geography, University of Barcelona, Spain)

Flooding is the most common type of climate-related disaster, resulting in major economic losses and affecting several billion people globally. In a context of warming climate these numbers are expected to grow according to the projected increases in heavy precipitation. Thus, assessing the evolution of flood risks in warmer climates is a key public interest issue. The use of natural archives and retrospective approaches, in particular those based on lake sediments, seems to be one of the best ways of supplementing the information derived from flood risk projections, which still involve considerable uncertainties.

The aim of this session is therefore to bring together the whole community of sedimentologists and palaeoclimatologists working on reconstructing the evolution of hydrological conditions on a local or regional scale from lake sediment archives. Innovative, multiproxy and multi-archive approaches, or approaches that endeavour to provide chronicles of the intensity of precipitation events, will be particularly appreciated. This session is supported by the PAGES working group Flood (https://pastglobalchanges.org/science/wg/floods/intro). Contributions from students or young researchers are encouraged. A prize, in memory of Bruno Wilhelm, for the most outstanding contribution will be awarded at the end of the session. A workshop on the synthesis of reconstructions of the frequency and intensity of floods in Europe and around the world is also envisaged.