An Analysis of Streamflow Trends in the Southern and Southeastern US from 1950–2015
1
U.S. Geological Survey, Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center (Rodgers), Little Rock, AR 72211, USA
2
U.S. Geological Survey, Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center (Roland), Hoos, Crowley-Ornelas, Knight, Nashville, TN 37211, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Water 2020, 12(12), 3345; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12123345
Received: 2 September 2020 / Revised: 17 November 2020 / Accepted: 18 November 2020 / Published: 29 November 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Using Large-Domain Hydrologic Modeling to Understand the Effects of Climate and Land Use on Water Availability)
In this article, the mean daily streamflow at 139 streamflow-gaging stations (sites) in the southern and southeastern United States are analyzed for spatial and temporal patterns. One hundred and thirty-nine individual time-series of mean daily streamflow were reduced to five aggregated time series of Z scores for clusters of sites with similar temporal variability. These aggregated time-series correlated significantly with a time-series of several climate indices for the period 1950–2015. The mean daily streamflow data were subset into six time periods—starting in 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000, and each ending in 2015, to determine how streamflow trends at individual sites acted over time. During the period 1950–2015, mean monthly and seasonal streamflow decreased at many sites based on results from traditional Mann–Kendall trend analyses, as well as results from a new analysis (Quantile-Kendall) that summarizes trends across the full range of streamflows. A trend departure index used to compare results from non-reference with reference sites identified that streamflow trends at 88% of the study sites have been influenced by non-climatic factors (such as land- and water-management practices) and that the majority of these sites were located in Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia. Analysis of the results found that for sites throughout the study area that were influenced primarily by climate rather than human activities, the step increase in streamflow in 1970 documented in previous studies was offset by subsequent monotonic decreases in streamflow between 1970 and 2015.
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Keywords:
streamflow; trends; cluster; correlation; Quantile-Kendall; trend departure index
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MDPI and ACS Style
Rodgers, K.; Roland, V.; Hoos, A.; Crowley-Ornelas, E.; Knight, R. An Analysis of Streamflow Trends in the Southern and Southeastern US from 1950–2015. Water 2020, 12, 3345. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12123345
AMA Style
Rodgers K, Roland V, Hoos A, Crowley-Ornelas E, Knight R. An Analysis of Streamflow Trends in the Southern and Southeastern US from 1950–2015. Water. 2020; 12(12):3345. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12123345
Chicago/Turabian StyleRodgers, Kirk; Roland, Victor; Hoos, Anne; Crowley-Ornelas, Elena; Knight, Rodney. 2020. "An Analysis of Streamflow Trends in the Southern and Southeastern US from 1950–2015" Water 12, no. 12: 3345. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12123345
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