An investigation of basin effects on flood discharges in North Dakota

An investigation of the relationship of peak discharge to causative storm variables and drainage-basin characteristics was made to provide guidelines for future analyses of frequency and magnitudes of floods from small drainage areas. The procedure used was (l) to estimate peak discharges on the ll study basins from multiple-regression models developed from the storm variables and (2) to relate the peak discharges to the basin characteristics through regression or correlation with particular attention given to the effect of basin shape.

The average standard error of estimate for the peak discharges ranged from n5 to 119 percent when only the four storm variables common to most basins were used.