JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

  Continuous measurement of river discharge is a hard and expensive task in hydrology. To overcome this problem, the stage readings at hydrometric gauges are permanently taken and the discharge of any time at which the actual discharge is unavailable will be estimated through a relationship between discharge and stage. To study the stage-discharge relations and the capability of long-term data in establishing a permanent stage-discharge relationship, and also to determine the best time to measure the discharge of rivers, a study was conducted at the hydrometric station of the Zayandehrud regulatory dam using data from 1990 to 2003. The data were analyzed using simple regression analysis, the percentage of relative error and factor analysis. The results indicated that the best model to show the stage-discharge relation at the studied station is a power function model. Moreover, the model used for every year can only be used for that year. The results also showed that the most suitable times for the measurement of discharge are July, December and March.