Detection of Streamflow Change in the Susquehanna River Basin

Zhenxing Zhang (), Andrew Dehoff, Robert Pody and John Balay

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2010, vol. 24, issue 10, 1947-1964

Abstract: Streamflow statistics are commonly used for purposes of planning and managing water resources in the Susquehanna River Basin. For accurately estimating streamflow statistics, it is important to identify whether there are increasing or decreasing changes during the period of records and whether the change is gradual or abrupt. This study employs repeated monotonic trend tests with varying beginning and ending time for detecting changes in streamflow in tributaries within the Susquehanna River Basin. The method is employed to analyze long-term streamflow trends and detect change for annual minimum, median, and maximum daily streamflow for eight unregulated watersheds within the basin. Monthly baseflow and storm runoff are investigated. The results show a considerable increase in annual minimum flow for most of the examined watersheds and a noticeable increase in annual median flow for about half of the examined watersheds. Both these streamflow increases were abrupt, with only a few years of transition centered around 1970. The abrupt change in annual minimum and median flows appears to occur in the summer and fall seasons. The abrupt change in annual minimum and median flows is due to increased flows in the summer and fall seasons. The results also indicate there is no long-term significant increasing or decreasing change in annual maximum flow in the examined watersheds. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Keywords: Streamflow; Change detection; Trend test; Mann–Kendall’s method; Susquehanna River Basin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-009-9532-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:24:y:2010:i:10:p:1947-1964

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-009-9532-0

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().