Monthly Flow Duration Curve Model for Ungauged River Basins

Abstract

Flow duration curve (FDC) is widely used in hydrology to assess streamflow in a river basin. In this study, a simple FDC model is developed for monthly streamflow data. The model consists of several steps including the nondimensionalization and then normalization in case the monthly streamflow data do not fit the normal probability distribution function. The normalized quantiles are calculated after which a back transformation is applied to the normalized quantiles to return back to the original dimensional streamflow data. In order to calculate annual streamflow of the river basin, an empirical regression equation is proposed using the drainage area and the annual total precipitation only as the input. As the final step of the model, dimensional quantiles of FDC are calculated. Ceyhan River basin in southern Turkey is chosen for the case study. Forty-two streamflow gauging stations are considered; two thirds of the gauging stations are used for the model calibration, and one third for validation. The modeled FDCs are compared to the observation and assessed with a number of performance metrics. They are found similar to the observed ones with a relatively good performance; they are good in the mid and high flow parts particularly while the low flow part of FDCs might require further detailed analysis.