Analysis of flood events in Slovenian streams

Abstract

Abstract The detailed analysis of individual flood event elements, including peak discharge (Q), flood event volume (V), and flood event duration (D), is an important step for improving our understanding of complex hydrological processes. More than 2,500 flood events were defined based on the annual maximum (AM) peak discharge from 50 Slovenian gauging stations with catchment areas of between 10 and 10,000 km2. After baseflow separation, the stations were clustered into homogeneous groups and the relationships between the flood event elements and several catchment characteristics were assessed. Different types of flood events were characteristic of different groups. The flashiness of the stream is significantly connected with mean annual precipitation and location of the station. The results indicate that some climatic factors like mean annual precipitation and catchment related attributes as for example catchment area have notable influence on the flood event elements. When assessing the dependency between the pairs of flood event elements (Q, V, D), the highest correlation coefficients were obtained for the Q-V pair. The smallest correlations or no correlations were observed between the Q and D variables.