Selection of Reference Stream Gauges at the River Ufa Catchment

Abstract: The paper is devoted to the problem of selection of reference stream gauges to estimate the average daily streamflow for ungauged catchments. Daily streamflow data are crucial for several fields such as water management, rational resource utilization, hydropower energy production, but the number of ungauged watersheds is still big and it is needed a large scale of regional approaches as a practical response to this problem. In the following, results of an application to the catchments of the rivers: Ufa, Ai, Bolshoj Ik, Tjuj, Sars and Jurjuzan are presented. The map correlation method has been performed [1], where differences is made between the “closest” stream gauge and the “best correlated” stream gauge criterion for reference station selection. It was found that selection of the nearest stream gauges do not usually provide high correlation between their daily streamflow values. Whereas choosing most correlated stream gauge as a reference perform better results in case of goodness of fit parameters (lower errors and higher NSE), compared to the nearest stream gauge.