1 The use of taxation records in assessing historical floods 2 in South Moravia, Czech Republic 3 4 R. Brázdil 1,2 , K. Chromá 2, L. Řezní čková 1,2 , H. Valášek 3, L. Dolák 1,2 , Z. Stacho ň1, 5 E. Soukalová 4, P. Dobrovolný 1,2 6 [1]{Institute of Geography, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic} 7 [2]{Global Change Research Centre, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Brno, 8 Czech Republic} 9 [3]{Moravian Land Archives, Brno, Czech Republic} 10 [4]{Hydrometeorological Institute, Brno, Czech Republic} 11 Correspondence to: R. Brázdil (
[email protected]) 12 13 Abstract 14 Since the second half of the 17th century, tax relief has been available to farmers and 15 landowners to offset flood damage to property (buildings) and land (fields, meadows, 16 pastures, gardens) in South Moravia, Czech Republic. Historically, the written applications 17 for this were supported by a relatively efficient bureaucratic process that left a clear data trail 18 of documentation, preserved at several levels: in the communities affected, in regional offices, 19 and in the Moravian Land Office, all of which are to be found in estate and family collections 20 in the Moravian Land Archives in the city of Brno, the provincial capital. As well as detailed 21 information about damage done and administrative responses to it, data is often preserved as 22 to the flood event itself, the time of its occurrence and its impacts, sometimes together with 23 causes and stages. The final flood database based on taxation records is used here to describe 24 the temporal and spatial density of both flood events and the records themselves.