Geostatistical prediction of flow-duration curves

Abstract

Abstract. We present in this study an adaptation of Topological kriging (or Top-kriging), which makes the geostatistical procedure capable of predicting flow-duration curves (FDCs) in ungauged catchments. Previous applications of Top-kriging mainly focused on the prediction of point streamflow indices (e.g. flood quantiles, low-flow indices, etc.). In this study Top-kriging is used to predict FDCs in ungauged sites as a weighted average of standardised empirical FDCs through the traditional linear-weighting scheme of kriging methods. Our study focuses on the prediction of period-of-record FDCs for 18 unregulated catchments located in Central Italy, for which daily streamflow series with length from 5 to 40 yr are available, together with information on climate referring to the same time-span of each daily streamflow sequence. Empirical FDCs are standardised by a reference streamflow value (i.e. mean annual flow, or mean annual precipitation times the catchment drainage area) and the overall deviation of the curves from this reference value is then used for expressing the hydrological similarity between catchments and for deriving the geostatistical weights. We performed an extensive leave-one-out cross-validation to quantify the accuracy of the proposed technique, and to compare it to traditional regionalisation models that were recently developed for the same study region. The cross-validation points out that Top-kriging is a reliable approach for predicting FDCs, which can significantly outperform traditional regional models in ungauged basins.