Characteristics of Ephemeral Hydrographs in the Southwestern United States
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19, Issue 1
Abstract
A collection of archived hydrographs for 28 ephemeral streams provided a unique opportunity to quantify hydrograph characteristics for channels of the arid/semiarid Southwestern United States. Recurrence of flow and volume calculated using annual maxima converge with those of the complete series by 7 years, suggesting that records of annual maxima are sufficient for estimates of extreme event recurrence. The relationship between peak discharge and volume for a flow event cannot be tightly constrained without consideration of event duration. As a result, volumes , for recurrence intervals , cannot be estimated from corresponding peaks . Instead, volume recurrence should be estimated based on the joint distribution of peak discharge and duration. Although the density governing event duration in these semiarid study regions decays as a power law with time, the authors could not identify a probability density that provides a good fit to volume magnitude. Deterministic relationships exist between peak discharge and volume for an event of a given magnitude for the Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; and Albuquerque, New Mexico regions.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by an Urban Flood Demonstration Program grant through the Army Corps. of Engineers. The authors wish to thank Thomas Halthom (Sacramento), Kerry Garcia (Carson City), Phillip Bowman (Albuquerque), and Shirley Francisco (Flagstaff) of the U.S. Geological Survey for locating and providing access to archived data.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19 • Issue 1 • January 2014
Pages: 10 - 17
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 26, 2011
Accepted: Jul 17, 2012
Published online: Aug 6, 2012
Discussion open until: Jan 6, 2013
Published in print: Jan 1, 2014
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