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Home > Iowa Academy of Science > Journals & Newsletters > Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science > Volume 118 (2011) > Number 1-4

 

Document Type

Research

Keywords

stochastic rainfall model, rainfall runoff, flood frequency, climate sensitivity

Abstract

A spatial-temporal Neyman-Scott Rectangular Pulse (NSRP) stochastic rainfall model is developed for seasonal-continuous simulation to project annual discharge probabilities from a relatively small watershed, the 1395 km2 Upper Iowa River watershed upstream from Decorah, Iowa. NSRP rainfall data is used as rainfall input to TOPMODEL, a conceptual, semidistributed rainfall runoff model, to calculate river discharge at a site common to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) gauging station in Decorah, Iowa. Annual peak flows based on simulated rainfall are used to fit a log-Pearson type III distribution to project 1 %-, 0.2%-, and 0.1 %-annual discharges. These results are compared to projections for the same frequency flows based on observed annual peak flow data measured at the USGS gauge site in Decorah. The NSRP model parameters are modified to reflect changes in environmental storm parameters (e.g. rainfall intensity and storm frequency) due to a warming atmosphere to study the sensitivity of annual peak flows due to climate variations.

Publication Date

January-December 2011

Journal Title

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science

Volume

118

Issue

1-4

First Page

1

Last Page

7

Copyright

© Copyright 2011 by the Iowa Academy of Science, Inc.

Language

EN

File Format

application/pdf

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