New Look at Regional Flood‐Frequency Relations for Arid Lands
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 118, Issue 6
Abstract
In the southwestern United States, flood‐frequency relations for streams that drain small arid basins are difficult to estimate, largely because of the extreme temporal and spatial variability of floods, many years of no flow, and short periods of systematic records of annual peaks. A new method is proposed that combines records for several streamflow‐gaging stations, as in the station‐year approach, and produces regional flood‐frequency relations using an iterative regression technique. This technique eliminates the need to extrapolate the flood‐frequency relation to the flood probability of interest. The resulting multiparameter regional flood‐frequency relation is based on all the available annual peak‐flow data. The method was applied to a group of records from 42 gaging stations in Nevada with many years of no flow and with many poorly defined flood‐frequency relations. One‐ and two‐parameter models were developed in which much of the variance in peak discharge is explained by drainage area. The log‐Pearson type III and Weibull probability distributions were used in the models. Part of the error is directly assessed using randomly selected subsamples of the annual peak discharges.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
1.
Carrigan, P. H. (1971). “A flood‐frequency relation based on regional record maxima.” Professional Paper 434‐F, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C.
2.
Clarke‐Hafstad, K. (1942). “Reliability of station‐year rainfall‐frequency determinations.” Trans., ASCE, 107(2142), 633–652.
3.
Dixon, W. J., and Massey, F. J. (1957). Introduction of statistical analysis. McGraw‐Hill Book Co., Inc., New York, N.Y.
4.
Fuller, W. E. (1914). “Flood flows.” Trans., ASCE, 77(1293), 564–617.
5.
“Guidelines for determining flood flow frequency.” (1982). U.S. Water Resources Council Bulletin 17B, Interagency Advisory Committee on Water Data, Washington, D.C.
6.
Kuczera, G. (1982). “Robust flood frequency models.” Water Resour. Res., 28(2), 315–324.
7.
Mosteller, F., and Tukey, J. W. (1977). Data analysis and regression. Addison Wesley, Boston, Mass.
8.
Riggs, H. C. (1973). “Regional analyses of streamflow characteristics.” Techniques of Water‐Resources Investigations; Book 4, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C.
9.
Roeske, R. H. (1978). “Methods for estimating the magnitude and frequency of floods in Arizona.” Open‐File Report 78‐711, U.S. Geological Survey, Tucson, Ariz.
10.
Stedinger, J. R., and Tasker, G. D. (1985). “Regional hydrologic analysis. 1: Ordinary, weighted, and generalized least squares compared.” Water Resour. Res., 21(9), 1421–1432.
11.
Thomas, W. O. (1985). “A uniform technique for flood frequency analysis.” J. Water Resour. Planning and Mgmt., ASCE, 3(3), 321–337.
12.
Thomas, B. E., and Lindskov, K. L. (1983). “Methods for estimating peak discharge and flood boundaries of streams in Utah.” Water‐Resources Investigations Report 83‐4129, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C.
13.
Waananen, A. O., and Crippen, J. R. (1977). “Magnitude and frequency of floods in California.” Water‐Resources Investigations 77‐21, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C.
14.
Wahl, K. L. (1977). “Simulation of regional flood‐frequency curves based on peaks of records.” Proc., Conf. on Alternative Strategies for Desert Development and Mgmt., United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), Sacramento, Calif.
15.
Wallis, J. R., and Wood, E. F. (1985). “Relative accuracy of log‐Pearson III procedures.” J. Hydr. Engrg., ASCE, 3(7), 1043–1056.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 ASCE.
History
Published online: Jun 1, 1992
Published in print: Jun 1992
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.