Hydrological 2D Modelling of Lithaios River Flows (Greece) Using GIS and Geostatistics for Environmental and Agricultural Water Resources Administration

Abstract

The goal of our investigation is the hydrological 2D modelling of Lithaios River’s (Central Greece) streamflow, using GIS and geostatistics for studying water velocity and discharge, stage elevation, and hydraulic features (streamflow depth, water flow area, wettable circumference, hydraulic radius and depth, n Manning’s coefficient, Chow’s composite n, Froude number, etc.). Moreover, compilations and validations of rating curves (RC) were performed from a series of stage h(t)–discharge Q(t) couples metrics, aiming to use these as a river toolkit to aid environmental and agriculture surface water resources management and help environmental flows calculation, streamflow tracking, and irrigation programming in the regional basin range. The statistical results showed that the Froude number during the study period was Fr < 1 showing that Lithaios River’s streamflow is classified as subcritical. The models’ validation outcomes by using various statistics and geostatistical alternative methods, model simulations and statistics errors criterions, were correlated with the retrieved power models’ streamflow data matching for the RC curves and 2D GIS modelling and mapping of river velocity and discharge relationships and were highly satisfying since the stabilities of the deployed relationships were solid. The outcomes of the study results are recommended to provide a hydrological serving toolkit for environmental water resources administration and irrigation programming. This toolkit could assist water supply principalities to rapidly and precisely calculate streamflow volumes and features with a minimal cost rate and workload, and it could be engaged in water supply and agricultural watering administration, the calculation of environmental flows, flood protection, groundwater recharge, and other objectives.