Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Multiple regression and inverse moments improve the characterization of the spatial scaling behavior of daily streamflows in the Southeast United States

March 5, 2015

Understanding the spatial structure of daily streamflow is essential for managing freshwater resources, especially in poorly-gaged regions. Spatial scaling assumptions are common in flood frequency prediction (e.g., index-flood method) and the prediction of continuous streamflow at ungaged sites (e.g. drainage-area ratio), with simple scaling by drainage area being the most common assumption. In this study, scaling analyses of daily streamflow from 173 streamgages in the southeastern US resulted in three important findings. First, the use of only positive integer moment orders, as has been done in most previous studies, captures only the probabilistic and spatial scaling behavior of flows above an exceedance probability near the median; negative moment orders (inverse moments) are needed for lower streamflows. Second, assessing scaling by using drainage area alone is shown to result in a high degree of omitted-variable bias, masking the true spatial scaling behavior. Multiple regression is shown to mitigate this bias, controlling for regional heterogeneity of basin attributes, especially those correlated with drainage area. Previous univariate scaling analyses have neglected the scaling of low-flow events and may have produced biased estimates of the spatial scaling exponent. Third, the multiple regression results show that mean flows scale with an exponent of one, low flows scale with spatial scaling exponents greater than one, and high flows scale with exponents less than one. The relationship between scaling exponents and exceedance probabilities may be a fundamental signature of regional streamflow. This signature may improve our understanding of the physical processes generating streamflow at different exceedance probabilities. 

Publication Year 2015
Title Multiple regression and inverse moments improve the characterization of the spatial scaling behavior of daily streamflows in the Southeast United States
DOI 10.1002/2014WR015924
Authors William H. Farmer, Thomas M. Over, Richard M. Vogel
Publication Type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Series Title Water Resources Research
Index ID 70137275
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Office of Surface Water