The analysis of time series of river water mineralization in the Dnipro basin with the use of theoretical laws of random variables distribution

Abstract

The analysis of current scientific work on the use of statistical methods in hydrochemical research has shown that this approach is sufficiently substantial, both in Ukraine and abroad. The purpose of this work is to determine the main statistical parameters and to research the possibility of applying theoretical laws of distribution to the time series of water mineralization.This research presents the results of the application of standard statistical methods of hydrometeorological information processing for data on water mineralization at 28 gauges of the Dnipro basin (within Ukraine) for the period from 1990 to 2015. The dynamics of the obtained statistical parameters (long-term annual average, coefficients of variation, asymmetry and autocorrelation) within the Dnipro basin in Ukraine has been analyzed. The average annual values of mineralization vary substantially within the studied part of the Dnipro basin - in the northern part the maximum value of the annual average mineralization is 447 mg/l, as it moves to the south, the mineralization increases and in the sub-basin of the Middle Dnipro it reaches a maximum of 971 mg/l; the highest values are observed in the south (sub-basin of the Lower Dnipro), where they can reach extremely high values for particular small rivers (the Solon River - Novopavlivka village, 3356 mg / l). The long-term variability of mineralization in the rivers of the studied area is insignificant, and the autocorrelation coefficients of the mineralization series are quite high, in most cases they are significant and tend to decrease from the sub-basin of the Prypyat’ river in the north to the sub-basin of the Lower Dnipro river in the south. Within the framework of the presented research, the possibility of using theoretical distribution curves known in hydrology to describe the series of river mineralization, using the example of the Dnipro basin, has also been analyzed. Using Pearson’s fitting criterion, the Pearson type III distributions and the three-parameter distributions by S.M.Krytsky and M.F.Menkel have been verified on their correspondence with the empirical series of mineralization. As a result, it was found that in 85% of cases the Pearson type III distribution can be used, and the three-parameter by S.M.Krytsky and M.F.Menkel can be used in 60% of cases.