Study of the River Discharge Alteration

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the alteration in water discharge due to the building of one of the largest dams in Romania. Modifications in the hydrological patterns of the studied river were emphasized by a complex technique that includes decomposition models of the series into trends, seasonal indices, and random components, as well as into Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs). The Mann–Kendall trend test indicates the existence of different positive slopes for the subseries S1 and S2 (before and after the inception of the Siriu dam, respectively) built from the raw series, S. The stationarity hypothesis was rejected for all series. The multifractal analysis shows two different patterns of the data series. After decomposing the subseries S1 and S2, it resulted that the seasonality indices are not the same. Moreover, the seasonal variations decreased after building the dam. Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) unveils different short- and long-term patterns of the series before and after building the dam, concluding that there is a significant alteration in the river discharge after the dam’s inception.