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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">HESS</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>Hydrology and Earth System Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">HESS</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">1607-7938</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/hess-15-715-2011</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Smooth regional estimation of low-flow indices: physiographical space based interpolation and top-kriging</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Castiglioni</surname>
<given-names>S.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Castellarin</surname>
<given-names>A.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Montanari</surname>
<given-names>A.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Skøien</surname>
<given-names>J. O.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Laaha</surname>
<given-names>G.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Blöschl</surname>
<given-names>G.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>School of Civil Engineering (Dept. DICAM), University of Bologna, Italy</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Department of Physical Geography, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Applied Statistics and Computing, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, BOKU Vienna, Austria</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Institute for Hydraulic and Water Resources Engineering, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Italy</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>04</day>
<month>03</month>
<year>2011</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>15</volume>
<issue>3</issue>
<fpage>715</fpage>
<lpage>727</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2011 S. Castiglioni et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2011</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/15/715/2011/hess-15-715-2011.html">This article is available from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/15/715/2011/hess-15-715-2011.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/15/715/2011/hess-15-715-2011.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/15/715/2011/hess-15-715-2011.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Recent studies highlight that spatial interpolation techniques of point data
can be effectively applied to the problem of regionalization of hydrometric
information. This study compares two innovative interpolation techniques for
the prediction of low-flows in ungauged basins. The first one, named
Physiographical-Space Based Interpolation (PSBI), performs the spatial
interpolation of the desired streamflow index (e.g., annual streamflow,
low-flow index, flood quantile, etc.) in the space of catchment descriptors.
The second technique, named Topological kriging or Top-kriging, predicts the
variable of interest along river networks taking both the area and nested
nature of catchments into account. PSBI and Top-kriging are applied for the
regionalization of &lt;i&gt;Q&lt;/i&gt;&lt;sub&gt;355&lt;/sub&gt; (i.e., a low-flow index that indicates the
streamflow that is equalled or exceeded 355 days in a year, on average) over
a broad geographical region in central Italy, which contains 51 gauged
catchments. The two techniques are cross-validated through a leave-one-out
procedure at all available gauges and applied to a subregion to produce a
continuous estimation of &lt;i&gt;Q&lt;/i&gt;&lt;sub&gt;355&lt;/sub&gt; along the river network extracted from a
90m elevation model. The results of the study show that Top-kriging and PSBI
present complementary features. Top-kriging outperforms PSBI at larger river
branches while PSBI outperforms Top-kriging for headwater catchments.
Overall, they have comparable performances (Nash-Sutcliffe efficiencies in
cross-validation of 0.89 and 0.83, respectively). Both techniques provide
plausible and accurate predictions of &lt;i&gt;Q&lt;/i&gt;&lt;sub&gt;355&lt;/sub&gt; in ungauged basins and
represent promising opportunities for regionalization of low-flows.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="13"/></counts>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
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