The impact of land-cover change on flood peaks in peatland basins

In headwater peatlands, saturation-excess overland flow is a dominant source of river discharge. Human modifications to headwater peatlands result in vegetation cover change but there is a lack of understanding about how the spatial distribution of such change impacts flood peaks. A fully distributed version of TOPMODEL with an overland flow velocity module was used to simulate flood response for three upland peat basins. Bare peat strips adjacent to channels resulted in a higher and faster flow peak; for a 20 mm/hr rainfall event, with bare riparian zones covering 10% of the basin area, peaks were increased, compared to the current hydrograph, by 12.8%, 1.8% and 19.6% in the three basins. High density Sphagnum ground cover over the same riparian zones reduced flow peaks (e.g. by 10.1%, 1.8% and 13.4% for the 20 mm hr-1 event) compared to the current hydrograph. With similar total areas of land-cover change, the size of randomly located patches of changed cover had no effect on peak flow for patch sizes up to 40000 m2. However, cover changes on gentle slope areas generally resulted in a larger change in peak flow when compared with the same changes on steeper slopes. Considering all results for the same proportion of catchment area that undergoes change, land-cover change along narrow riparian buffer strips had the highest impact on river flow. Thus, the protection and revegetation of damaged riparian areas in upland peat catchments may be highly beneficial for flood management