Analysis of seasonal behavior of flood events and their temporal changes for the Hyrcanian watersheds (Pilot study: watersheds of the Gorganrud River Basin, Iran)

Identifying the seasonal behavior of flood events and their changes over time in watersheds provide useful insights for a better understanding of flood processes, planning water projects, and managing flood risks. Directional statistics provide a good basis for determining the similarity between flood occurrence times and is useful for flood seasonality analysis. This method was applied to a set of 20 river gauge stations in the Gorganrud River Basin, located in the North of Iran, with a 48-year recording period, to identify the seasonality of flood occurrences as well as their variations. Two indices namely MDF and r which indicate the average time of flood occurrence and the uniformity of their occurrence date during the year (degree of seasonality), were calculated for the maximum instantaneous flow data, respectively. Also, in order to examine long-term changes in flood seasonality, the recording period of the maximum flow data was divided into three 16-year intervals representing the distant past, near past, and the present time and then the indices were calculated for each interval. The results show that the average time of flood occurrence in the Gorganrud River Basin is in springs and summers. Also, the majority of the stations (about 75%) have r values between 0.3 and 0.7, which indicates an intermediate degree of seasonality meaning that the time of occurrence of the events spreads over one, two or three seasons. Analysis of long-term changes in flood seasonality shows that the average time of flood events in the Gorganrud River Basin has not changed significantly from the past. The degree of seasonality, however, has decreased compared to the past period. A mixture of different flood generation processes such as snowmelt and summer or fall rainfalls and the combined influence of geographical location and the size of watersheds can be the possible reasons for the reduction in flood seasonality in this basin.