XX Abbay Proposal
XX Abbay Proposal
XX Abbay Proposal
POSTGRADUATE STUDIES
DEVELOPMENT OF
FLOW- DURATION- FREQUENCY
RELATIONSHIP
FOR ABBAY BASIN
BY TSEGAYE GASHIE
Most often, flood frequency analysis describes a flood event only by its peak. However
the true flood severity is also defined by its volume and duration. The QDF approach
analysis maximum average flows over different durations d (d= 1,3,---,N days) similar to
intensity duration frequency curves, each of the QDF curves represents the flood
frequency distribution for the duration d.
The climate of the Abay basin is dominated by two factors; its near-equatorial location
and an altitude ranging from 590 meter above sea level to more than 4,000 meters. The
influence of these factors determines the rich variety of local climates, ranging from hot
and desert-like along the Sudan border to temperate on the high plateaus, and cold on the
mountain peaks.
There are three recognized seasons. The main rainy season (kiremt) lasts generally from
June-September during which South West wind brings rains from the Atlantic Ocean.
About 70-90 percent of total rainfall occurs during this season, which is also typified by
minimum level of sun shine, low variation in daily temperatures and high relative
humidity. A dry seam (Beg) lasts from October to January during which clear skies are
associated with maximum sunshine, high daily temperature variation, and low relative
humidity. Finally, the minor season (Belg) lasts from February to May during which
south-east winds bring the small rains from the Indian Ocean and temperatures are at
their highest. The timing and duration of these seasons varies considerably by location.
Generally the mean annual rainfall over the whole basin is about 1,400 mm with mean
vapors transpiration about 1,300mm (BCEOM phase 3, part 1998)
The Abbay basin may be classified under three main land forms the plateau high lands
which generally lie between about 2000-2700masl and which comprise the eastern
portion of the basin, the plateau valley transect the high lands and at their lower ends fall
sharply into deep eroded canyons which join the Abbay river itself; and the eroded hills
and plains which lie along the western boundary of the high plateau falling to the west
and north-west forwards the Sudan border. High mountains over the plateau highlands.
The Abbay river rises in the center of the catchments and develops its course in a
clockwise spiral in a deep gorge, collecting tributaries along its 922Km length from Lake
Tana to Sudan border(BCEOM.Phase 2 April 1999)
In addition one of the major problems in Ethiopia generally, and particularly in Abay
basin is that even though, limited hydro metrological networks exist in the country the
data bases (data collection, analysis, proper compilation and publication) is not in
accordance to the day to day growing demand. In this respect, these pertinent data and
information for the planning and design of water resources, highway, and other project is
not readily available. This can be expressed by the non availability of adequately
processed and compiled standard information like representative flow duration frequency
curves and soon.
IV Objective of the study
The overall objective of the study is to analyses the high flow hydrology within the basin
and establishes a relationship between the high flows, duration and their return period.
This would incorporate generation of the independent high flows at the gauging station
and then high flow frequency analysis to forecast the availability of high flow, for
different water resources management purpose and for the design of different wate4r
resources and other engineering structures at different selected locations.
The study also aims at the generation of QDF parameters and constructs curves.
Unlike the gauged catchments where there is an adequate observed stream flow records,
un gauged catchments pose a different problem. Thus a regionalization approach would
have been used for construction of regional curve flow frequency estimation which
enables prediction of the high flows at un gauged sites.
Two basic assumptions in statistical flood frequency analysis are the independence and
stationary of the data series. In addition, the assumption that the data come from the same
distribution (homogeneity) is made. The following tests, (Bob’ee and Ashkar, 1991)
would be employed for the study
An outlier is an observation that deviates significantly from the bulk of the data, which
may be due to errors in data collection, or recording, or due to nature cause. The presence
of outliers in the data causes difficulties when fitting a distribution to the data. How and
high outliers are both possible and have different effects on the analysis. The Grubbs and
Beck (1972) test (G-B) may be and to detect outliers. In this test the quantities XH and
XL are calculated by using
XH= exp ( + HNs)
XL= exp ( - KNs)
Where and s are the mean and standard deviation of the natural logarithms of sample
respectively and KN is the G-B statistic tabulated for various sample size and
significance level by Grubbs and Beck (1972)