Regionalization of daily flow characteristics in part of the Eastern Cape, South Africa

A method is described that allows long-term 1-day annual and seasonal flow duration curves at any ungauged location in one of the drainage regions of South Africa to be established. The method is based on normalization of observed flow duration curves by a long-term mean daily flow and subsequent averaging of normalized ordinates of the curves. The estimate of mean daily discharge for an ungauged site is obtained using the information from the existing national data base of flow characteristics. The established set of flow duration curves at a site is further translated into actual daily streamflow time series using a simple nonlinear spatial interpolation technique. © 1997 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.