Spatial recognition of regional maximum floods in ungauged watersheds and investigations of the influence of rainfall

Abstract

This study primarily aims to develop a method for estimating the range of flood sizes in small and medium ungauged watersheds in local river streams. In practice, several water control projects have insufficient streamflow information. To compensate for the lack of data, the streamflow propagation method (SPM) provides streamflow information for ungauged watersheds. The ranges of flood sizes for ungauged watersheds were generated using a specific flood distribution analysis based on the obtained streamflow data. Furthermore, the influence of rainfall information was analyzed to characterize the patterns of specific flood distributions. Rainfall location, intensity, and duration highly affected the shape of the specific flood distribution. Concentrated rainfall locations affected the patterns of the maximum specific flood distribution. The shape and size of the minimum specific flood distribution were dependent on the rainfall intensity and duration. The Creager envelope curve was used to generate equations for the maximum/minimum specific flood distribution for the study site. The ranges of the specific flood distributions were produced for each watershed size.