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Power Law Dependence on Time of River Flood Decay and Its Relationship to Long‐Term Discharge Frequency Distribution
Author(s) -
Schubert G.,
Lingenfelter R. E.
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/wr010i001p00098
Subject(s) - streamflow , flood myth , power law , environmental science , term (time) , inverse , discharge , exponent , hydrology (agriculture) , recession , geology , physics , geography , geotechnical engineering , mathematics , statistics , drainage basin , archaeology , quantum mechanics , linguistics , geometry , cartography , philosophy , keynesian economics , economics
River discharge frequency distributions, based on long‐term records of daily streamflow, are often found to have an inverse power law dependence on discharge. This is shown to reflect the recession of individual river floods, which are found to have an inverse power law dependence on time with an exponent of 1/( s + 1) where s is the slope of the power law dependence on discharge of the river discharge frequency distribution. This relationship will allow forecasting of river discharges with about ±5% uncertainty for as much as 30 days after flood peaks.