Annual runoff regional frequency analysis in Sicily

Abstract

This paper performs annual runoff frequency analysis in Sicily, Italy using the index runoff method. Homogeneous regions, not necessarily defined by geographical boundaries but sharing common features from a morphologic and climatic standpoint, have been identified. For each region a single probability distribution function can be fitted to the available annual runoff data scaled by the index runoff. Starting from an initial dataset of 105 hydrometric stations, 57 stations have been selected using heuristic criteria associated with the Hosking and Wallis’s discordancy measure. The Mantel tests have been then applied to find out the physical and morphological parameters best correlated with the runoff using the distances matrix approach. These parameters have been successively used in the cluster analysis to delineate homogeneous regions and the Hosking and Wallis’s heterogeneity test has been applied to the clusters in order to verify their homogeneity. Further analysis has been carried out to test the goodness-of-fit of four different candidate distributions of the scaled annual runoff using the chi-square test. For all the identified homogeneous regions the three-parameters lognormal distribution has been proved the most suitable distribution for the dimensionless annual runoff. In order to predict the runoff quantiles at ungauged sites, the procedure finally envisages the estimation of mean annual runoff (index runoff) by multiple regression analysis, providing expressions that relate mean annual runoff to some climatic and morphologic features of the basins