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eISSN: 2083-5906
ISSN: 1230-1485
ISSN: 1230-1485
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
The Copula-based Flow Duration
Curves (CFDC) Method for Calculating
Ecological Flow of the Seasonal River
1
Hydrological Center of Tai’an City, Tai’an, 271001, China
2
China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing IWHR Corporation (BIC),
Beijing,100048, China
3
College of Water Conservancy and Civil Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an, 271018, China
4
Shandong Key Laboratory of Agricultural Water-saving Technology and Equipment, Shandong Agricultural University,
Tai’an 271018, Shandong, China
5
Shandong Agricultural University Survey and Design Institute, Tai’an, 271018, China
These authors had equal contribution to this work
Submission date: 2025-02-13
Final revision date: 2025-06-03
Acceptance date: 2025-06-27
Online publication date: 2025-09-12
Corresponding author
Lei Hou
College of Water Conservancy and Civil Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an, 271018, China
College of Water Conservancy and Civil Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an, 271018, China
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
The ecological flow is the key to grasping the ecological environment and water resources
in rivers. To resolve the issue of being incapable of determining seasonal river ecological flow due to
the large inter-annual and intra-annual variations in river hydrological processes, this paper proposes
a Copula-based Flow Duration Curves (CFDC) method that takes into account the “cross-phenomenon”
between the annual and monthly inflow types. The ecological flow process of the seasonal river,
the Dawen River, was calculated based on the natural monthly streamflow data at the three hydrological
stations from 1956 to 2016. The results indicated that the ecological flow variation ranges at Beiwang
station, Loude station, and Daicun Dam station were as follows: during wet years, 2.96-102.79 m³/s,
0.60-70.39 m³/s, and 9.29-201.95 m³/s, respectively; during normal years, 2.56-47.68 m³/s, 0.45-23.40 m³/s,
and 5.59-66.97 m³/s, respectively; and during dry years, 2.20-13.90 m³/s, 0.51-8.65 m³/s,
and 4.49-38.17 m³/s, respectively. The ecological flow determined by the Copula-based Flow
Duration Curves (CFDC) method fulfills the requirements of river ecological health and is scientific
and reasonable. This achievement not only improves the applicability of the hydrological method
to determine ecological flow, but also provides a theoretical basis for ecological restoration
and comprehensive management of water resources in the Dawen River.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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