Publications by authors named "Ronald Van Balen"

Floods clustered in episodes are the most prevalent natural disaster worldwide, causing substantial economic and human losses. Although these events are often linked to time-periods of extreme rainstorms and unique atmospheric circulation patterns, the river basin characteristics affected by anthropogenic land use changes could exert a strong influence. However, the way and extent of how land use changes across different time scales affect flooding periods are still unclear, especially considering the historical land use changes.

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Both regular flow and infrequent outburst floods shape the mountain landscape, but their relative contributions have been widely debated, in part due to the paucity of quantitative data on historical outburst floods. In June 2000, an outburst flood was triggered by a landslide-dam failure in a rapidly exhumed region of the Eastern Himalaya. To investigate the role of this kind outburst flood on landscape evolution, we employ topographic differencing, satellite imagery, and 2D hydraulic simulations to quantify the equivalent erosion and deposition within ~ 80 km flood route downstream of the breach.

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The meandering of alluvial rivers may be forced by normal faulting due to tectonically altered topographic gradients of the river valley and channel at and near the fault zone. Normal faulting can affect river meandering by either instantaneous (e.g.

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