fg
Volume XIX |

On the linear trends of a water discharge data under temporal variation. Case study: the upper sector of the Buzău river (Romania)

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide a statistic overview of the hydrological impact of the Siriu Dam on the Buzau River (Romania), taking into account the temporal variations. Our case study uses the daily mean discharges of the Buzau River (1st of January 1955 to 31st of December 2010), registered at Nehoiu hydrometric station. The building of the Siriu Dam in 1984 required the division of the study interval into two sub-periods, each being analyzed annually and seasonally, on the series themselves or on the pre-whitened ones when prior required. The existence of a linear trend on different periods and sub-periods has been studied by using the Mann-Kendall and Seasonal Mann-Kendall tests. In the case of the existence of a linear trend, the slopes have been calculated with Sen’s Slope Estimator. The stationarity has been studied by using the Dickey-Fuller and Kwiatkowski–Phillips–Schmidt–Shin tests. According to our preliminary results, the stationarity in trend after the dam’s construction, respectively increasing linear trends for almost all the data series and subseries was observed. The trend and stationarity outcomes proved that the Siriu Reservoir has a good impact on the homogeneity of the Buzau River’s discharge and the increasing trends are related to human activity impact coupled with climate change/variability.