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Streamflow disaggregation: a nonlinear deterministic approach
1Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California, Davis, USA
2Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, University of California, Davis, USA
3Center for Computational Science and Engineering, University of California, Davis, USA
4Water Resources Division, Broward County, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA
*formerly at: Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California, Davis, USA
Abstract. This study introduces a nonlinear deterministic approach for streamflow disaggregation. According to this approach, the streamflow transformation process from one scale to another is treated as a nonlinear deterministic process, rather than a stochastic process as generally assumed. The approach follows two important steps: (1) reconstruction of the scalar (streamflow) series in a multi-dimensional phase-space for representing the transformation dynamics; and (2) use of a local approximation (nearest neighbor) method for disaggregation. The approach is employed for streamflow disaggregation in the Mississippi River basin, USA. Data of successively doubled resolutions between daily and 16 days (i.e. daily, 2-day, 4-day, 8-day, and 16-day) are studied, and disaggregations are attempted only between successive resolutions (i.e. 2-day to daily, 4-day to 2-day, 8-day to 4-day, and 16-day to 8-day). Comparisons between the disaggregated values and the actual values reveal excellent agreements for all the cases studied, indicating the suitability of the approach for streamflow disaggregation. A further insight into the results reveals that the best results are, in general, achieved for low embedding dimensions (2 or 3) and small number of neighbors (less than 50), suggesting possible presence of nonlinear determinism in the underlying transformation process. A decrease in accuracy with increasing disaggregation scale is also observed, a possible implication of the existence of a scaling regime in streamflow.
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Citation: Sivakumar, B., Wallender, W. W., Puente, C. E., and Islam, M. N.: Streamflow disaggregation: a nonlinear deterministic approach, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 11, 383-392, 2004. Bibtex EndNote Reference Manager
