Stefano Basso
About
I hold expertise in the field of hydrology and environmental hazards which I developed at universities and research institutes across Europe and the USA.
I engage with varied research topics, such as the characterization and prediction of water resources and flood hazards, solute and sediment fluxes through river basins, the water-energy-ecosystems nexus (especially in small hydropower), and the influence of landscapes on hydrologic and water quality dynamics.
A common goal links all these research lines: understanding and quantifying how the intrinsic variability of hydrologic systems mediates impacts of global change on watersheds, the resulting risks for humans, and the effects of adaptation and mitigation measures.
I have experience in fund raising, research transfer and the supervision of early career researchers.
2024 - Now: Associate professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway.
2022 - 2024: Senior scientist, Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Norway.
2017 - 2022: Scientist and Research group leader, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Germany.
2014 - 2015: Visiting Research Scholar, Duke University, USA.
2012 - 2016: Doctoral researcher, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), Switzerland.
2009 - 2012: Research fellow, University of Padova, Italy.
Research
A major direction of my research activity concerns the study of flood generation processes and the development of novel approaches to quantify the peril of floods in river basins. My work showed that hydrologic extremes emerge from ordinary dynamics, a concept that is gaining ground. Data-driven analyses of meteorological and land wetness conditions which triggered runoff production clarified that the interactions responsible for the largest floods also occur for common events, and spread out in the research community to become a standard. Such awareness fostered the rise of new methods which pair physical understanding of the mechanisms producing floods with tractable mathematical descriptions of their odds and magnitude. They enabled the identification of key drivers of extreme floods and reliable assessment of the flood hazard from commonly available data, especially when lacking long observational records.
An additional direction of my research concerns the quantitative study of the water-energyecosystem nexus in small run-of-river hydropower, a technology which assumed global relevance in the past decade. My work highlighted the importance of hydrologic variability for economic and energy optima of small hydropower plants, drew attention on their overlooked environmental impacts, and demonstrated ways to reconcile small hydropower exploitation with the preservation of ecosystem services. It enabled identifying strengths and weaknesses of policies and incentive schemes used to foster renewable energy production and led to growing recognition of the effects of small hydropower on riverine ecosystems, which were named by the 2020 Horizon Scan of Emerging Global Conservation Issues among the key global issues for ecological conservation after my proposal. The following paper showcases my work in this area.
Works showcasing the breadth of my research are available in the Publication section.
Publications
Nature Geoscience
Blame the river not the rain
Nine Reasons Why Extreme Floods may be Worse Than Expected
Water Resources Research Editors’ Choice Award
2023
-
Wang, Hsing-Jui;
Merz, Ralf;
Yang, Soohyun;
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano.
(2023)
Emergence of heavy tails in streamflow distributions: the role of spatial rainfall variability.
Advances in Water Resources
Academic article
-
Miniussi, Arianna;
Merz, Ralf;
Kaule, Lisa;
Basso, Stefano.
(2023)
Identifying discontinuities of flood frequency curves.
Journal of Hydrology
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Merz, Ralf;
Tarasova, Larisa;
Miniussi, Arianna.
(2023)
Extreme flooding controlled by stream network organization and flow regime.
Nature Geoscience
Academic article
-
Mushtaq, Sumra;
Miniussi, Arianna;
Merz, Ralf;
Tarasova, Larisa;
Marra, Francesco;
Basso, Stefano.
(2023)
Prediction of Extraordinarily High Floods Emerging From Heterogeneous Flow Generation Processes.
Geophysical Research Letters
Academic article
-
Wang, Hsing-Jui;
Merz, Ralf;
Yang, Soohyun;
Basso, Stefano.
(2023)
Inferring heavy tails of flood distributions through hydrograph recession analysis.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS)
Academic article
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Lun, David;
Merz, Ralf;
Blöschl, Günter;
Basso, Stefano;
Bertola, Miriam.
(2023)
Shifts in flood generation processes exacerbate regional flood anomalies in Europe.
Communications Earth & Environment
Academic article
2022
-
Merz, Ralf;
Miniussi, Arianna;
Basso, Stefano;
Petersen, Karl-Jonas;
Tarasova, Larisa.
(2022)
More Complex is Not Necessarily Better in Large-Scale Hydrological Modeling: A Model Complexity Experiment across the Contiguous United States.
Bulletin of The American Meteorological Society - (BAMS)
Academic article
-
Merz, Bruno;
Basso, Stefano;
Blöschl, Günter;
Merz, Ralf;
Viglione, Alberto;
Vorogushyn, Sergiy.
(2022)
Understanding Heavy Tails of Flood Peak Distributions.
Water Resources Research
Academic literature review
-
Basso, Stefano;
Bakken, Tor Haakon.
(2022)
Reconciling small hydropower and ecosystem services in river basins.
Frontiers in Environmental Science
Editorial
-
Yang, Soohyun;
Büttner, Olaf;
Kumar, Rohini;
Basso, Stefano;
Borchardt, Dietrich.
(2022)
An Analytical Framework for Determining the Ecological Risks of Wastewater Discharges in River Networks Under Climate Change.
Earth's Future
Academic article
-
Mushtaq, Sumra;
Miniussi, Arianna;
Merz, Ralf;
Basso, Stefano.
(2022)
Reliable estimation of high floods: A method to select the most suitable ordinary distribution in the Metastatistical extreme value framework.
Advances in Water Resources
Academic article
-
Saavedra, Felipe;
Musolff, Andreas;
von Freyberg, Jana;
Merz, Ralf;
Basso, Stefano;
Tarasova, Larisa.
(2022)
Disentangling scatter in long-term concentration-discharge relationships: the role of event types.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS)
Academic article
2021
-
Basso, Stefano;
Merz, Ralf;
Miniussi, Arianna.
(2021)
PHEV! The physically-based extreme value distribution of river flows.
Environmental Research Letters
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Ghazanchaei, Zohreh;
Tarasova, Larisa.
(2021)
Characterizing hydrograph recessions from satellite-derived soil moisture.
Science of the Total Environment
Academic article
2020
-
Merz, Ralf;
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano.
(2020)
The flood cooking book: ingredients and regional flavors of floods across Germany.
Environmental Research Letters
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Soulsby, Chris.
(2020)
Water-energy-ecosystem nexus in small run-of-river hydropower: optimal design and policy.
Applied Energy
Academic article
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano;
Wendi, Dadiyorto;
Viglione, Alberto;
Kumar, Rohini;
Merz, Ralf.
(2020)
A Process-Based Framework to Characterize and Classify Runoff Events - the Event Typology of Germany.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano;
Merz, Ralf.
(2020)
Transformation of generation processes from small runoff events to large floods.
Geophysical Research Letters
Academic article
-
Merz, Ralf;
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano.
(2020)
Parameter’s controls of distributed catchment models - How much information is in conventional catchment descriptors?.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
2019
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Merz, Ralf;
Kiss, Andrea;
Basso, Stefano.
(2019)
Causative classification of river flood events.
WIREs Water
Academic literature review
2018
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano;
Poncelet, Carine;
Merz, Ralf.
(2018)
Exploring Controls on Rainfall-Runoff Events: 2. Regional Patterns and Spatial Controls of Event Characteristics in Germany.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano;
Zink, Matthias;
Merz, Ralf.
(2018)
Exploring Controls on Rainfall-Runoff Events: 1. Time Series-Based Event Separation and Temporal Dynamics of Event Runoff Response in Germany.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
2016
-
Basso, Stefano.
(2016)
A physically based analytical model of flood frequency curves.
Geophysical Research Letters
Academic article
2015
-
Basso, Stefano.
(2015)
On the emergence of heavy-tailed streamflow distributions.
Advances in Water Resources
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Frascati, Alessandro;
Marani, Marco.
(2015)
Climatic and landscape controls on effective discharge.
Geophysical Research Letters
Academic article
-
Hastik, Richard;
Basso, Stefano;
Geitner, Clemens;
Vrščaj, Borut;
Walzer, Chris.
(2015)
Renewable energies and ecosystem service impacts.
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
Academic literature review
-
Betterle, Andrea;
Basso, Stefano;
Biswal, Basudev.
(2015)
Predicting streamflow distributions and flow duration curves from landscape and climate.
Advances in Water Resources
Academic article
2014
-
Doulatyari, Behnam;
Basso, Stefano.
(2014)
River flow regimes and vegetation dynamics along a river transect.
Advances in Water Resources
Academic article
2013
-
Lazzaro, Gianluca;
Basso, Stefano;
Schirmer, Mario.
(2013)
Water management strategies for run-of-river power plants: profitability and hydrologic impact between the intake and the outflow.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Rodriguez-Iturbe, Ignacio.
(2013)
Resilience of river flow regimes.
PNAS
Academic article
2012
-
Basso, Stefano.
(2012)
Streamflow variability and optimal capacity of run-of-river hydropower plants.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
2010
-
Botter, Gianluca;
Basso, Stefano;
Porporato, Amilcare;
Rodriguez-Iturbe, Ignacio;
Rinaldo, Andrea.
(2010)
Natural streamflow regime alterations: Damming of the Piave river basin (Italy).
Water Resources Research
Academic article
Journal publications
-
Wang, Hsing-Jui;
Merz, Ralf;
Yang, Soohyun;
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano.
(2023)
Emergence of heavy tails in streamflow distributions: the role of spatial rainfall variability.
Advances in Water Resources
Academic article
-
Miniussi, Arianna;
Merz, Ralf;
Kaule, Lisa;
Basso, Stefano.
(2023)
Identifying discontinuities of flood frequency curves.
Journal of Hydrology
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Merz, Ralf;
Tarasova, Larisa;
Miniussi, Arianna.
(2023)
Extreme flooding controlled by stream network organization and flow regime.
Nature Geoscience
Academic article
-
Mushtaq, Sumra;
Miniussi, Arianna;
Merz, Ralf;
Tarasova, Larisa;
Marra, Francesco;
Basso, Stefano.
(2023)
Prediction of Extraordinarily High Floods Emerging From Heterogeneous Flow Generation Processes.
Geophysical Research Letters
Academic article
-
Wang, Hsing-Jui;
Merz, Ralf;
Yang, Soohyun;
Basso, Stefano.
(2023)
Inferring heavy tails of flood distributions through hydrograph recession analysis.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS)
Academic article
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Lun, David;
Merz, Ralf;
Blöschl, Günter;
Basso, Stefano;
Bertola, Miriam.
(2023)
Shifts in flood generation processes exacerbate regional flood anomalies in Europe.
Communications Earth & Environment
Academic article
-
Merz, Ralf;
Miniussi, Arianna;
Basso, Stefano;
Petersen, Karl-Jonas;
Tarasova, Larisa.
(2022)
More Complex is Not Necessarily Better in Large-Scale Hydrological Modeling: A Model Complexity Experiment across the Contiguous United States.
Bulletin of The American Meteorological Society - (BAMS)
Academic article
-
Merz, Bruno;
Basso, Stefano;
Blöschl, Günter;
Merz, Ralf;
Viglione, Alberto;
Vorogushyn, Sergiy.
(2022)
Understanding Heavy Tails of Flood Peak Distributions.
Water Resources Research
Academic literature review
-
Basso, Stefano;
Bakken, Tor Haakon.
(2022)
Reconciling small hydropower and ecosystem services in river basins.
Frontiers in Environmental Science
Editorial
-
Yang, Soohyun;
Büttner, Olaf;
Kumar, Rohini;
Basso, Stefano;
Borchardt, Dietrich.
(2022)
An Analytical Framework for Determining the Ecological Risks of Wastewater Discharges in River Networks Under Climate Change.
Earth's Future
Academic article
-
Mushtaq, Sumra;
Miniussi, Arianna;
Merz, Ralf;
Basso, Stefano.
(2022)
Reliable estimation of high floods: A method to select the most suitable ordinary distribution in the Metastatistical extreme value framework.
Advances in Water Resources
Academic article
-
Saavedra, Felipe;
Musolff, Andreas;
von Freyberg, Jana;
Merz, Ralf;
Basso, Stefano;
Tarasova, Larisa.
(2022)
Disentangling scatter in long-term concentration-discharge relationships: the role of event types.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS)
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Merz, Ralf;
Miniussi, Arianna.
(2021)
PHEV! The physically-based extreme value distribution of river flows.
Environmental Research Letters
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Ghazanchaei, Zohreh;
Tarasova, Larisa.
(2021)
Characterizing hydrograph recessions from satellite-derived soil moisture.
Science of the Total Environment
Academic article
-
Merz, Ralf;
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano.
(2020)
The flood cooking book: ingredients and regional flavors of floods across Germany.
Environmental Research Letters
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Soulsby, Chris.
(2020)
Water-energy-ecosystem nexus in small run-of-river hydropower: optimal design and policy.
Applied Energy
Academic article
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano;
Wendi, Dadiyorto;
Viglione, Alberto;
Kumar, Rohini;
Merz, Ralf.
(2020)
A Process-Based Framework to Characterize and Classify Runoff Events - the Event Typology of Germany.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano;
Merz, Ralf.
(2020)
Transformation of generation processes from small runoff events to large floods.
Geophysical Research Letters
Academic article
-
Merz, Ralf;
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano.
(2020)
Parameter’s controls of distributed catchment models - How much information is in conventional catchment descriptors?.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Merz, Ralf;
Kiss, Andrea;
Basso, Stefano.
(2019)
Causative classification of river flood events.
WIREs Water
Academic literature review
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano;
Poncelet, Carine;
Merz, Ralf.
(2018)
Exploring Controls on Rainfall-Runoff Events: 2. Regional Patterns and Spatial Controls of Event Characteristics in Germany.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
-
Tarasova, Larisa;
Basso, Stefano;
Zink, Matthias;
Merz, Ralf.
(2018)
Exploring Controls on Rainfall-Runoff Events: 1. Time Series-Based Event Separation and Temporal Dynamics of Event Runoff Response in Germany.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano.
(2016)
A physically based analytical model of flood frequency curves.
Geophysical Research Letters
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano.
(2015)
On the emergence of heavy-tailed streamflow distributions.
Advances in Water Resources
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Frascati, Alessandro;
Marani, Marco.
(2015)
Climatic and landscape controls on effective discharge.
Geophysical Research Letters
Academic article
-
Hastik, Richard;
Basso, Stefano;
Geitner, Clemens;
Vrščaj, Borut;
Walzer, Chris.
(2015)
Renewable energies and ecosystem service impacts.
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
Academic literature review
-
Betterle, Andrea;
Basso, Stefano;
Biswal, Basudev.
(2015)
Predicting streamflow distributions and flow duration curves from landscape and climate.
Advances in Water Resources
Academic article
-
Doulatyari, Behnam;
Basso, Stefano.
(2014)
River flow regimes and vegetation dynamics along a river transect.
Advances in Water Resources
Academic article
-
Lazzaro, Gianluca;
Basso, Stefano;
Schirmer, Mario.
(2013)
Water management strategies for run-of-river power plants: profitability and hydrologic impact between the intake and the outflow.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano;
Rodriguez-Iturbe, Ignacio.
(2013)
Resilience of river flow regimes.
PNAS
Academic article
-
Basso, Stefano.
(2012)
Streamflow variability and optimal capacity of run-of-river hydropower plants.
Water Resources Research
Academic article
-
Botter, Gianluca;
Basso, Stefano;
Porporato, Amilcare;
Rodriguez-Iturbe, Ignacio;
Rinaldo, Andrea.
(2010)
Natural streamflow regime alterations: Damming of the Piave river basin (Italy).
Water Resources Research
Academic article
Teaching
Supervision
A group of supervised postdoctoral researchers, interns, Ph.D. and master students nominated me for the 2020 Supervision Award of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ.
Postdoctoral researchers
I have been the supervisor of two postdoctoral researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Germany.
- Dr. Larisa Tarasova (Jun 2020 - Sep 2022), now Senior Scientist and Research group leader at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Germany.
- Dr. Arianna Miniussi (Nov 2019 - Dec 2021), now Catastrophe Modelling Specialist at Gen Re, Germany.
Ph.D. students
I have been main and co-supervisor of two Ph.D. candidates to completion at the Helmholtz Interdisciplinary Graduate School for Environmental Research, Germany.
- Hsing-Jui Wang (Sep 2019 - Apr 2024), Emergence and prediction of heavy tails of river flow distributions (funded by the Glory Foundation of Taiwan). Role: main supervisor.
- Larisa Tarasova (May 2017 - May 2020), Process-based characterization and typology of runoff events in Germany. Role: co-supervisor.