Abstract
The study focused on investigating the presence of change patterns in 600 unimpaired streamflow stations across the continental U.S. at different time intervals to understand the change patterns that can provide significant insight regarding climate variability and change. Each station had continuous streamflow data of at least 30 years (the entire dataset covered a range of 109 years). Presence of trends and shifts were detected in water year and the four seasons (fall, winter, spring, and summer) analyzing the water year and seasonal mean flows. Two non-parametric tests, namely, the Mann-Kendall test and the Pettitt’s test were used to identify the trends and the shifts, respectively. The results showed an increasing trend in the northeast and upper-mid regions, whereas southeast and northwest regions underwent a decrease. Shifts followed similar patterns as trends with higher number of stations with significant change. Fall and spring showed the highest number of stations with increasing and decreasing change, respectively, in the seasonal analyses. Results of this study may assist water managers to understand the streamflow change patterns across the continental U.S., especially at the regional scale since this study covers a long range of years with a large number of stations in each region.
Highlights
Streamflow, which measures the amount of discharge in natural streams, plays an important role in the hydrosphere because streams are responsible for the transportation of mass and energy through watersheds [1]
Statistical methods were applied to the original data, which was obtained over a long period of time, in order to study the change patterns in water year and the four seasons at different time intervals
Data from 600 unimpaired streamflow stations across the continental U.S were analyzed in the current study to determine the long-term change patterns over a wide range of years
Summary
Streamflow, which measures the amount of discharge in natural streams, plays an important role in the hydrosphere because streams are responsible for the transportation of mass and energy through watersheds [1]. Streamflow plays an important role in the hydrologic cycle, which maintains the mass balance of water in the natural system. The change in climate has affected the behavior of hydrologic variables both spatially and temporally [8], which affects the natural ecosystem [9]. Documentation of the change patterns and understanding the behavior of the hydrologic variables become important in order to manage water resources [10,11,12,13]
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