Regional frequency analysis using spatial data extension method : II .Flood frequency inference for ungaged watersheds

Paper number: 16-028Received: 11 March 2016; Revised: 8 April 2016; Accepted: 8 April 2016AbstractIn order to infer regional flood frequency for ungauged watersheds, index flood method was applied for this study. To pursuit this given purpose, annual peak flood data for 22 watersheds located at the upstream of the Chungju Dam watershed were obtained from the spatial extension technique. The regionalization of mean annual flood was performed from extended flood data at 22 points. Based on the theory that flood discharge and watershed size follows the power law the regionalization generated the empirical relationship. These analyses were executed for the full size of the Chungju Dam watershed as one group and three different mid-size watersheds groups. From the results, the relationship between mean annual flood and watershed sizes follow the power law. We demonstrated that it is appropriate to use the relationship between specific flood discharges from the upper and lower watersheds in terms of estimating the floods for the ungaged watersheds. Therefore, not only the procedure of regional frequency analysis but also regionalizaion analaysis using finer discretization of the regions interest with respect to the regional frequency analyisis for the ungauged watersheds is important.Keywords: Regional flood frequency analysis, Index flood method, Power law, Regionalization, Ungaged watershed