The use of taxation records in assessing historical floods in South Moravia, Czech Republic

Abstract

Abstract. Since the second half of the 17th century, tax relief has been available to farmers and landowners to offset flood damage to property (buildings) and land (fields, meadows, pastures, gardens) in South Moravia, Czech Republic. Historically, the written applications for this were supported by a relatively efficient bureaucratic process that left a clear data trail of documentation, preserved at several levels: in the communities affected, in regional offices, and in the Moravian Land Office, all of which are to be found in estate and family collections in the Moravian Land Archives in the city of Brno, the provincial capital. As well as detailed information about damage done and administrative responses to it, data are often preserved as to the flood event itself, the time of its occurrence and its impacts, sometimes together with causes and stages. The final flood database based on taxation records is used here to describe the temporal and spatial density of both flood events and the records themselves. The information derived is used to help create long-term flood chronologies for the rivers Dyje, Jihlava, Svratka and Morava, combining floods interpreted from taxation records with other documentary data and floods derived from later systematic hydrological measurements (water levels, discharges). Common periods of higher flood frequency appear largely in the periods 1821-1850 and 1921-1950, although this shifts to several other decades for individual rivers. A number of uncertainties are inseparable from flood data taxation records: their spatial and temporal incompleteness; the inevitable limitation to larger-scale damage and restriction to the summer half-year; and the different characters of rivers, including land-use changes and channel modifications. Taxation data have considerable potential for extending our knowledge of past floods for the rest of the Czech Republic, not to mention other European countries in which records have survived.

SMC-Flood database: a high-resolution press database on flood cases for the Spanish Mediterranean coast (1960–2015)

“…Whilst negative trends appear in studies using data that cover several centuries, positive trends appear in studies that analyse data on the last half-century. These divergences are due to both capturing climatic oscillations in data with a long duration (Barriendos et al, 2014) and the heterogeneity of the sources used during recent years (Brázdil et al, 2014). Furthermore, the increase in exposure to flood risk has led to a rise in flood trends (Pérez-Morales et al, 2018).…”

“…In addition, this extreme climate is complicated by the social component. Because of the intensive agriculture, industry in the major urban centres, trade and tourism, this region is the main centre of urban growth (Burriel, 2015). Thus, the resulting dynamic economy places it among the highest rates of population and economic growth in Europe over the last 50 years.…”

Evolving flood patterns in a Mediterranean region (1301–2012) and climatic factors – the case of Catalonia

“…Macdonald, 2014), but also due to the relative youth of the science that encompasses historical climatology with the modern understanding of climate dynamics, meteorology and hydrology (Glaser, 1996;Camuffo and Enzi, 1996;Brázdil et al, 1999;Lang and Coeur, 2002). The major documentary historical sources containing climatic information and details of its effects are local and state government records, religious collections, private collections, notaries' archives and taxation records Brázdil et al, 2014). Whenever possible, the historical flood classification should be based on discharge estimates, with a sensitivity analysis to assess the specific errors of the hydraulic model for the conversion of historical flood levels into discharge (Brázdil et al, 2006;Herget et al, 2014).…”

Impacts of hydrometeorological extremes in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands in 1706–1889 as derived from taxation records

“…The resulting protocol was sent to the Moravian Land Administration (Gubernium) in Brno, where a decision was taken on granting or denying tax relief and its duration. This decision was communicated to the estate office which subsequently informed the municipality affected (Brázdil et al 2012, 2014a).…”

“…A series of papers have addressed the spatio-temporal variability of hydrometeorological extremes for various groups of estates located in several parts of southern Moravia: the Bítov estate in the 1771-1848 period (Zahradníček 2005); the Veselí nad Moravou estate 1784-1849 (Chromá 2011); ten estates in south-eastern Moravia 1751-1900 (Brázdil et al 2012); the Brtnice, Třebíč and Velké Meziříčí estates, 1706-1849 ; and five estates in south-western Moravia 1761-1900 (Chromá et al 2013). More recently, taxation data for 201 estates in South Moravia were used to analyse floods in the 1652-1941 period (Brázdil et al 2014a) and hailstorms from 1650 to 1941 (Brázdil et al 2014b).…”