Surface Water Hydrology Assignment 2 Solution - ENGIN5201, 2019

This document presents a comprehensive solution to a Surface Water Hydrology assignment (ENGIN5201). The assignment focuses on analyzing streamflow data from the Murray River. The solution includes identifying and describing the river's location, downloading and processing daily streamflow data, generating statistical summaries (daily, monthly, seasonal, and annual), and creating frequency plots using log scales. The document also demonstrates the application of the Log-Pearson Type III distribution to calculate flood frequency distributions for various return periods. Finally, the solution includes the completed example application files as required by the assignment brief. The analysis covers key aspects of hydrological modeling and data interpretation.

1
Surface Water Hydrology
Assignment 2
Date
Words
Student’s Name
Institution

2
Surface Hydrology
Problem 1
i. River description and location
The river selected with at least 40 years of continuous daily streamflow is the Murray
River at Barham. The river is Australia’s longest with a length of 2,508 km. The river starts from
the Australian Alps, and flows towards the western side of the highest mountains in Australia.
The river flows and reaches the ocean at Lake Alexandrina. The river is located in site number
409005, and zone 55. The Easting of the location is 239577.000 and the Northing is
6053284.000. The Latitude is 35o37’47.4”S, and the Longitude is 144o07’27.4”E. The river is a
good selection because it is one of the largest rivers in the region, and it has a continuous daily
streamflow all year round1.
ii. Daily streamflow data (ML/day) – In Zipped file: Surface Water Hydrology
iii. Statistical Summaries – In Excel Spreadsheet: Surface Water Hydrology
iv. Frequency Plots
a) Daily
1 “Water Measurement Information System” (Water Measurement Information System)
<http://data.water.vic.gov.au/static.htm> accessed May 29, 2019

3
10/5/1978 9:40
31/05/1978 10:00:00
20/06/1978 09:40:00
12/7/1978 11:00
31/07/1978 10:15:00
21/08/1978 11:30:00
11/9/1978 10:00
2/10/1978 10:15
23/10/1978 09:45:00
15/11/1978 10:00:00
6/12/1978 9:30
29/12/1978 09:45:00
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Field pH Point
QC
b) Monthly
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Field pH Point
QC
c) Seasonal

4
Winter Spring Summer Fall
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
Field pH Point
Qc
d) Annual
17/05/1978 09:30:00 5/9/1982 7:45
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
Site 409005 MURRAY
RIVER @ BARHAM Lat:-
35.62983731
Long:144.1242907 Elev:0
Field pH Point
Site 409005 MURRAY
RIVER @ BARHAM Lat:-
35.62983731
Long:144.1242907 Elev:0
QC
v. Data Sets and graphs in Spreadsheet: Surface Water Hydrology.
Problem 2
Log-Pearson Type III Distribution is one of the common statistical analyses used
to calculate flood frequency distributions2. Flood frequency distributions show the flood sites
in a stream or a river. In order to calculate the 2 year, 5 year, 10 year, 25 year, 50 year, and
2 Hamed, K. and Rao, A.R., 1999. Flood frequency analysis. CRC press.

5
100 year return periods, the formula below is applied. The yearly peak flows are observed
and then the frequency distributions are calculated as in the excel spreadsheet
Log_Pearson_Type_3 for the given return periods.
Problem 3
The selected option for this project is Option 2. The completed example
application and files are in the Zipped file Surface Hydrology Problem 3_Option 2.

6
References
Hamed, K. and Rao, A.R., 1999. Flood frequency analysis. CRC press.
Water Measurement Information System” (Water Measurement Information System)
<http://data.water.vic.gov.au/static.htm> accessed May 29, 2019