WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH GRANT PROPOSAL
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH GRANT PROPOSAL
Project ID: 2003NY33G
Title: An Assessment of New Advances in Low Streamflow Estimation and Characterization
Project Type: Research
Focus Categories: Drought, Water Use, Non Point Pollution
Keywords: Risk Assessment, GIS Geographic Information Systems, Watershed Hydrology, Statistical Hydrology, Regional Hydrology
Start Date: 08/01/2003
End Date: 07/31/2006
Federal Funds: $154058.00
Matching Funds: $154589.00
Congressional District: 25
Principal Investigator: Kroll, Chuck (State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse)
Abstract: Low streamflow
estimates are needed to issue and/or renew National Pollution Discharge Elimination
System (NPDES) permits, plan water supply, hydropower, and irrigation systems,
design cooling-plant facilities, site treatment plants and sanitary landfills,
and determine waste-load allocations. Lowflows are also used to make decisions
regarding interbasin transfers of water and allowable basin withdrawals, and
for assessing the impact of prolonged droughts on aquatic ecosystems. Knowledge
of low streamflows is important for water quality management, where low streamflows
provide the necessary dilution of non-point source and point source pollution
discharges, and water quantity management, where low streamflows greatly influence
water use policy.With the National Drought Policy Act of 1998, the US Congress
indicated the need for a coordinated drought management plan, as well as a
systematic and permanent process to address droughts. Unfortunately, there
is no agreed upon methodology for estimating low streamflow statistics in
the United States, and the current methods for estimating low streamflow statistics
are primarily based on techniques recommended for flood frequency analyses.
The proposed project will address this deficiency.
Methods: By combining recent advances and new methods in both physical and
statistical hydrology with Geographic Information System mapping techniques,
we will improve our ability to estimate low flow statistics in riverways throughout
the United States. This project will address at-site low streamflow characterization,
where a historic streamflow record from a gauged river site is utilized, and
the estimation of low streamflow statistics at ungauged river sites. This
project continues from a recently completed national assessment of low streamflow
characterization and estimation methodology. Using three distinct study regions
with a high density of gauged river sites and available ancillary information
such as digital information regarding watershed hydrogeologic properties,
we will perform a rigorous statistical comparison of competing low streamflow
estimation techniques. This comparative analysis will include bootstrap and
jackknife simulations and analytical statistical comparisons of existing and
proposed methodologies. Methods investigated will include estimators of low
streamflow statistics at intermittent river sites, trends in low streamflow
series due to urbanization and climate variation, and regional regression
and baseflow correlation analyses. With our findings we will develop a template
of lowflow analyses with which one could perform a regional lowflow assessment
in any region of the United States.
Objectives: The objectives of this research are to:
1) perform an extensive low streamflow characterization at gauged river sites
within each study region;
2) create a spatially-explicit digitally-derived watershed characteristic
database;
3) examine the development of low streamflow regional regression models for
ungauged quantile estimation;
4) explore baseflow correlation estimators as an alternative to regional regression;
5) perform a rigorous statistical comparison between regional regression and
baseflow correlation estimators; and
6) create a template with which one could perform a regional low streamflow
analysis in any region of the United States.
Progress/Completion Report PDF