Occurrence of severe floods in the Salado River Basin, Buenos Aires province, Argentina

Abstract

Floods in the Salado Riverbasin, Argentina, seriously affect bothhuman activities and the environment.Inadequate and improper water managementaggravates the effects of natural extremeevents. The damage caused by the extremeflood in 1993 cost US$507 million,affected 14,500 farmers and flooded6,500,000 ha within the basin. This paperanalyses natural trends within the rainfalland riverflow records, and considers thepossible effects of human interference. Theriver basin is mainly underlain byimpermeable soils with a high water table.The soil factor and the low topographicgradients often produce surface run-off withslow lateral drainage. Very often, heavyrainfall associated with high soil moisturecontent leads to flooding of the basin.Three major flood events that have occurredsince 1960 have been analysed. Floodoccurrences have been placed in the contextof precipitation variability and soil waterstorage. The precipitation records of twolong-term stations in the basin (Junin andDolores) show an increasing trend and thisis due to rainfall increases in the warmseason. However, none of the rain eventsreached the probable maximum precipitationof 100 year return period. The dischargerecords of the Salado River are comparedwith the pattern of the ElNiño/Southern Oscillation and it isfound that only the May discharge anomaliesare weakly related to the El Niñodriven climate variability. Results fromthis study are useful for the formulationof flood mitigation measures. The paperconcludes with a consideration of the floodmitigation policy developed in PlanMaestro.