The
work of the Department of Soil Erosion and Land Uses is focused on
the hydrological and geomorphological effects of land use changes
at different time and space scales. It has a scientific staff of 7.
At present its research activities include the effects of land use
change from traditional management, sediment budgets at the basin
scale, identification of sediment sources using GIS, current and past
fluctuations of sediment yield determined from lake and reservoir
sedimentation studies, use of GIS for geomorphic and land use mapping,
assessment and spatial prediction of geomorphic hazards by GIS and
multivariate analysis, and the impact of tourism on soil erosion and
on land management organisation. The Department has a lengthy research
background in extreme events and large debris flows and played a central
role in analyzing the August 1996 Biescas campsite disaster. It specialises
in field based studies and operates an experimental station and three
experimental catchments in the neighbouring Pyrenees. The Department
was a partner in the EC VAHMPIRE project (Validating hydrological
models using process studies and internal data from research basins;
tools for assessing hydrological impacts of environmental change),
supplying information for modellers and studying runoff and sediment
transport from small experimental catchments and experimental plots.
