Seasonal fractal-scaling of floods in two U.S. water resources regions

• Published in: Journal of hydrology (Amsterdam) 2016-09, Vol.540, p.232-239
• Main Authors: Alipour, M.H., Rezakhani, A.T., Shamsai, A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Flood frequency-size analysis; Flood management; Floods; Fractal analysis; Fractal behavior; Freshwater; Regional pattern; Seasonality; Strategy; Streamflow; Summer; Tasks; Time series; Water resources; Water runoff
• ISSN: 0022-1694; 1879-2707
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.06.016

•A systematic fractal approach that enables identifying flood regime in streamflow data.•Considering seasonality in the analysis through a practical approach.•Enhanced estimates of the magnitude of floods with certain recurrence intervals.•Identifying flood formation factors that cause variations of fractal factors.•Regional patterns for the relative behavior of summer and winter power-law fits. Understanding the behavior and estimating the magnitude of floods with specific recurrence intervals are important tasks for various applications such as flood protection strategies. Fractal analysis has proven useful in characterization of flood frequency behavior. We employ a systematic fractal approach which enables dividing streamflow data into different behavior regimes and, in particular, identifying flood regimes. Since seasonality is a key factor in flood-formation scenarios, we incorporate this concept in our analysis through generating two separate streamflow data sets for summer and winter, and next performing associated fractal analysis on each. To illustrate our approach and see how it enhances our flood-magnitude estimations, we study a large number of watersheds chosen from two adjacent water resources regions in the United States. Besides improving flood-magnitude estimates, this seasonal fractal analysis can suggest patterns through which one may obtain more fine-grained information about regional behavior of floods.