fdc: Flow Duration Curve

Description

Computes and plots the Flow Duration Curve (FDC) corresponding to a given time series of streamflow discharges.

Usage

fdc(x, ...)
## S3 method for class 'default':
fdc(x,lQ.thr=0.7,hQ.thr=0.2, plot=TRUE, log="y", main="Flow Duration Curve", 
    xlab="\% Time flow equalled or exceeded", ylab="Q, [m3/s]", ylim, 
    col="black", pch=1, lwd=1, lty=1, cex=0.4, leg.txt=NULL, verbose= TRUE, 
    thr.shw=TRUE, new=TRUE, ...)
## S3 method for class 'matrix':
fdc(x, lQ.thr=0.7, hQ.thr=0.2, plot=TRUE, log="y", main= "Flow Duration Curve",                         
    xlab="\% Time flow equalled or exceeded", ylab="Q, [m3/s]", ylim, 
    col=palette("default")[1:ncol(x)], pch=1:ncol(x), lwd=rep(1, ncol(x)), 
    lty=1:ncol(x), cex=0.4, leg.txt= colnames(x), verbose=TRUE, 
    thr.shw=TRUE, new=TRUE, ...)
## S3 method for class 'data.frame':
fdc(x, lQ.thr=0.7, hQ.thr=0.2, plot=TRUE, log="y", main= "Flow Duration Curve",                         
     xlab="\% Time flow equalled or exceeded", ylab="Q, [m3/s]", ylim, 
     col=palette("default")[1:ncol(x)], pch=1:ncol(x), lwd=rep(1, ncol(x)), 
     lty=1:ncol(x), cex=0.4, leg.txt= colnames(x), verbose=TRUE, 
     thr.shw=TRUE, new=TRUE, ...)

Arguments

numeric, zoo, data.frame or matrix object with the observed streamflows for which the flow duration curve have to be computed. Measurements at several gauging stations can be stored in a data.frame of matrix object, and in that case, each column of

lQ.thr

numeric, low-flow separation threshold. If this value is different from NA, a vertical line is drawn in this value, and all the values to the left of it are deemed low flows.

hQ.thr

numeric, high-flow separation threshold. If this value is different from NA, a vertical line is drawn in this value, and all the values to the right of it are deemed high flows

plot

logical. Indicates if the flow duration curve should be plotted or not. Default value is TRUE.

log

character, indicates which axis has to be plotted with a logarithmic scale. Default value is y

main

See plot. An overall title for the plot: see title.

xlab

See plot. A title for the x axis.

ylab

See plot. A title for the y axis.

ylim

See plot.default. The y limits of the plot.

col

See plot.default. The colors to be used for lines and points. Multiple colors can be specified so that each point can be given its own color. If there are fewer colors than points they are recy

pch

See plot.default. A vector of plotting characters or symbols: see points.

lwd

See plot.default. The line width, see par.

lty

See plot.default. The line type, see par.

cex

See plot.default. A numerical vector giving the amount by which plotting characters and symbols should be scaled relative to the default. This works as a multiple of par("cex"). 'N

leg.txt

vector with the names that have to be used for each column of x.

verbose

logical; if TRUE, progress messages are printed (when x is a matrix or data.frame).

thr.shw

logical, indicating if the streamflow values corresponding to the user-defined thresholds lQ.thr and hQ.thr have to be shown in the plot.

new

logical, if TRUE (default), a new plotting window is created.

...

further arguments passed to or from other methods (to the plotting functions)

Value

numeric, matrix or data.frame whose columns contains the % of time each one of the streamflow magnitudes given as input was equalled or exceeded. The resulting values have to be multiplied by 100 to get a percentage. When plot is TRUE (default), the resulting flow duration curve is plotted in a new window.

References

Vogel, R., and N. M. Fennessey (1994), Flow duration curves I: A new interpretation and confidence intervals, ASCE, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 120(4). Vogel, R., and N. Fennessey (1995), Flow duration curves II: A review of applications in water resources planning, Water Resources Bulletin, 31(6), 1029-1039, doi:10.1111/j.1752-1688.1995.tb03419.x. Yilmaz, K. K., H. V. Gupta, and T. Wagener (2008), A process-based diagnostic approach to model evaluation: Application to the NWS distributed hydrologic model, Water Resour. Res., 44, W09417, doi:10.1029/2007WR006716.

Examples

Run this code

## Loading daily streamflows at the station Oca en Ona (Ebro River basin, Spain) ##
data(OcaEnOnaQts)

## Daily Flow Duration Curve
fdc(OcaEnOnaQts)