Low Flow Scaling with Respect to Drainage Area and Precipitation in Northern Iran
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 15, Issue 3
Abstract
Low flow spatial scaling relationships have been defined by log-log linearity between 7-, 15-, 30-, and 60-day low flow probability weighted moments (PWMs) and drainage area size in north of Iran. The PWMs are used to avoid the influence of outliers. Across the entire region, the regression relationship is not significant which is believed to be due to climate heterogeneity of the region. Dividing the region into two humid and semiarid regions, the log-log relationship is found to be significant for the humid subdivision while it is not significant in semiarid region. This implies that in a heterogeneous climate regime, scaling alone is a poor method for extending low flow at-site probabilistic behavior to a region. However, for the semiarid subdivision, the relationship between mean annual rainfall and PWMs verges on significant which suggests to the hydrologist that other alternatives to drainage area size should be examined for scaling low flows in such regions.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The writer appreciates the reviewers’ comments which help improve the quality of the paper.
References
Burlando, P., and Rosso, R. (1996). “Scaling and multiscalling models of depth-duration-frequency curves for storm precipitation.” J. Hydrol., 187, 45–64.
Dalrymple, T. (1960). “Flood frequency analysis.” U.S. Geological survey water supply paper 1543-A, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.
Eaton, B., Church, M., and Ham, D. (2002). “Scaling and regionalization of flood flows in British Columbia, Canada.” Hydrolog. Process., 16, 3245–3263.
Furey, P. R., and Gupta, V. K. (2000). “Space-time variability of low streamflows in river network.” Water Resour. Res., 36, 2679–2690.
Gupta, V. K., Castro, S. L., and Over, T. M. (1996). “On scaling exponents of spatial peak flow from rainfall and river network geometry.” J. Hydrol., 187, 81–104.
Gupta, V. K., and Dawdy, D. R. (1995). “Physical interpretations of regional variation in the scaling exponents of flood quantiles.” Hydrolog. Process., 9, 347–361.
Gupta, V. K., Mesa, O. J., and Dawdy, D. R. (1994). “Multiscaling theory of flood peaks: regional quantile analysis.” Water Resour. Res., 30, 3405–3421.
Gupta, V. K., and Waymire, E. (1990). “Multi scaling properties of spatial rainfall and river flow distributions.” J. Geophys. Res., 95(D3), 1999–2009.
Kumar, P., Guttarp, P., and Foufoula-Georgiou, E. (1994). “A probability weighted moment test to assess simple scaling.” Stochastic Hydrol. Hydraul., 8, 173–183.
Mantilla, R., Gupta, V. K., and Mesa, O. J. (2006). “Role of coupled flow dynamics and real network structures on Hortonian scaling of peak flows.” J. Hydrol., 322, 155–167.
Modarres, R. (2008). “Regional frequency distribution type of low flow in north of Iran by L-moments.” Water Resour. Manage., 22, 823–841.
Ogden, F. L., and Dawdy, D. R. (2003). “Peak discharge scaling in small Hortonian watershed.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 8(2), 64–73.
Over, T. M., and Gupta, V. K. (1996). “A space-time theory of mesoscale rainfall using random cascade.” J. Geophys. Res., 101(D21), 26319–26331.
Pandey, G. R. (1998). “Assessment of scaling behavior of regional floods.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 3(3), 169–173.
Schaefer, M. G. (1990). “Regional analysis of precipitation annual maximum in Washington state.” Water Resour. Res., 26, 119–131.
Smith, J. A. (1992). “Representation of basin scale in flood peak distribution.” Water Resour. Res., 28(11), 2993–2999.
Stedinger, J. R., Vogel, R. M., and Foufoula-Georgiou, E. (1993). “Frequency analysis of extreme events.” Hand book of hydrology, D. R. Maidment, ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 18.1–18.66.
Vogel, R. M., and Sankarasubramanian, A. (2000). “Spatial scaling properties of annual streamflow in the United States.” Hydrol. Sci. J., 45, 465–476.
Yue, S., and Wang, C. Y. (2004). “Scaling of Canadian low flows.” Stochastic Environ. Res. Risk Assess., 18, 291–305.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 18, 2008
Accepted: Sep 17, 2009
Published online: Sep 18, 2009
Published in print: Mar 2010
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.