Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Impact of climate change on streamflow timing (case study: Guilan Province)

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Theoretical and Applied Climatology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The timing of streamflow characteristics is important for water resources management and agricultural irrigation. Using daily discharge data from 37 gaging stations, located in Guilan Province, Iran, for the period 2002–2016, this study investigated nine streamflow timing measures and tested their trends by the Mann-Kendall non-parametric test at the 90% significance level. The nine measures included Q5%, Q10%, Q50%, Q90%, and Q95%, date corresponding to the center of fall volume, and dates corresponding to centers of spring and winter volumes. Results revealed that the median values of low flow timing slopes (Q5% and Q10%) had significant negative trends. Q5% had the steepest downward trends, implying that low flows originating from groundwater occurred earlier than in the past. In contrast, high flow timings (Q90% and Q95%) showed upward trends. Also, Q50% exhibited upward trends for all 37 stations. The trends suggest that climate change has altered the river flow regime. Among the nine measures, the date corresponding to the center of fall volume (FCV) and the dates corresponding to the centers of winter/spring volumes (WSCV) had the most significant downward trends. Trends in the spring freshet were mainly significantly negative in the northwest. However, trends in the pulse date were negative mainly in the west. The occurrence of low flows became earlier in time, and the length of dry periods within a year became longer.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Burn DH (1994) Hydrologic effects of climatic change in west-Central Canada. J Hydrol 160(1–4):53–70

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burn DH (2008) Climatic influences on streamflow timing in the headwaters of the Mackenzie River basin. J Hydrol 352(1–2):225–238

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burn DH, Cunderlik JM, Pietroniro A (2004) Hydrological trends and variability in the Liard River basin/Tendances hydrologiques et variabilité dans le basin de la rivière Liard. Hydrol Sci J 49(1):53–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cayan DR, Kammerdiener SA, Dettinger MD, Caprio JM, Peterson DH (2001) Changes in the onset of spring in the Western United States. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 82(3):399–416

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crecco VA, Savoy TF (1985) Effects of biotic and abiotic factors on growth and relative survival of young American shad, Alosa sapidissima, in the Connecticut River. Can J Fish Aquat Sci 42(10):1640–1648

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dettinger MD, Cayan DR (1995) Large-scale atmospheric forcing of recent trends toward early snowmelt runoff in California. J Clim 8(3):606–623

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dinpashoh Y, Jhajharia D, Fakheri-Fard A, Singh VP, Kahya E (2011) Trends in reference crop evapotranspiration over Iran. J Hydrol 399(3–4):422–433

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dudley RW, Hodgkins GA, McHale MR, Kolian MJ, Renard B (2017) Trends in snowmelt-related streamflow timing in the conterminous United States. J Hydrol 547:208–221

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goulding HL, Prowse TD, Bonsal B (2009) Hydroclimatic controls on the occurrence of break-up and ice-jam flooding in the Mackenzie Delta, NWT, Canada. J Hydrol 379(3–4):251–267

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall DK, Crawford CJ, DiGirolamo NE, Riggs GA, Foster JL (2015) Detection of earlier snowmelt in the Wind River Range, Wyoming, using Landsat imagery, 1972–2013. Remote Sens Environ. 162:45–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hare JA, Morrison WE, Nelson MW, Stachura MM, Teeters EJ, Griffis RB, Chute, AS et al (2016) A vulnerability assessment of fish and invertebrates to climate change on the Northeast US Continental Shelf. PloS one 11(2):e0146756.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hodgkins GA, Dudley RW (2006) Changes in the timing of winter–spring streamflows in eastern North America. Geophys Res Lett, 33(6):1913–2002

  • Hodgkins GA, Dudley RW, Huntington TG (2003) Changes in the timing of high river flows in New England over the 20th century. J Hydrol 278(1–4):244–252

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Isazadeh M, Biazar SM, Ashrafzadeh A (2017) Support vector machines and feed-forward neural networks for spatial modeling of groundwater qualitative parameters. Environ Earth Sci 76(17):610

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kam J, Knutson TR, Milly PC (2018) Climate model assessment of changes in winter-spring streamflow timing over North America. J Clim (2018)

  • Kang DH, Gao H, Shi X, ul Islam S, Déry SJ (2016) Impacts of a rapidly declining mountain snowpack on streamflow timing in Canada’s Fraser River basin. Sci Rep 6:19299

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kendall MG (1975) Rank correlation methods, 4th edn. Charles Griffin, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Mann HB (1945) Non-parametric tests against trend. Econometrica 33:245–259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Milly PCD, Betancourt J, Falkenmark M, Hirsch RM, Kundzewicz ZW, Lettenmaier DP, Stouffer RJ (2008) Stationarity is dead: whither water management? Science 319(5863):573–574

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morán-Tejeda E, Lorenzo-Lacruz J, López-Moreno JI, Rahman K, Beniston M (2014) Streamflow timing of mountain rivers in Spain: recent changes and future projections. J Hydrol 517:1114–1127

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roberts DC, Forrest AL, Sahoo GB, Hook SJ, Schladow SG (2018) Snowmelt timing as a determinant of lake inflow mixing. Water Resour Res 54(2):1237–1251.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ryberg KR, Akyüz FA, Wiche GJ, Lin W (2016) Changes in seasonality and timing of peak streamflow in snow and semi-arid climates of the north-central United States, 1910–2012. Hydrol Process 30(8):1208–1218

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sen PK (1968) Estimates of the regression coefficient based on Kendall’s tau. J Am Stat Assoc 63(324):1379–1389

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shen YJ, Shen Y, Fink M, Kralisch S, Chen Y, Brenning A (2018) Trends and variability in streamflow and snowmelt runoff timing in the southern Tianshan Mountains. J Hydrol 557:173–181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stewart IT, Cayan DR, Dettinger MD (2005) Changes toward earlier streamflow timing across western North America. J Clim 18(8):1136–1155

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tabari H, Aeini A, Talaee PH, Some'e BS (2012) Spatial distribution and temporal variation of reference evapotranspiration in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran. Hydrol Process 26(4):500–512

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Westmacott JR, Burn DH (1997) Climate change effects on the hydrologic regime within the Churchill-Nelson River basin. J Hydrol 202(1–4):263–279

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yue S, Wang C (2004) The Mann-Kendall test modified by effective sample size to detect trend in serially correlated hydrological series. Water Resour Manag 18(3):201–218

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yue S, Pilon P, Phinney B, Cavadias G (2002) The influence of autocorrelation on the ability to detect trend in hydrological series. Hydrol Process 16(9):1807–1829

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang X, Harvey KD, Hogg WD, Yuzyk TR (2001) Trends in Canadian streamflow. Water Resour Res 37(4):987–998

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Water Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

    Yagob Dinpashoh, Seyed Mostafa Biazar & Shahab Kavehkar

  2. Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering and Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Vijay P. Singh

Authors
  1. Yagob Dinpashoh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Vijay P. Singh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Seyed Mostafa Biazar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Shahab Kavehkar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Seyed Mostafa Biazar.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Dinpashoh, Y., Singh, V.P., Biazar, S.M. et al. Impact of climate change on streamflow timing (case study: Guilan Province). Theor Appl Climatol 138, 65–76 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-019-02810-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-019-02810-2

Search

Navigation