Monthly Streamflow modeling Costa Rica, Honors Thesis

Portfolio submission description

Lack of instrumentation in many developing nations makes it difficult to gauge available water resources, an essential part of national socioeconomic wellbeing. Costa Rica is a developing country, possessing comparatively good hydrologic data which are limited in time and space. This study establishes a simple model to predicted mean monthly flows and their interannual variability at unmonitored locations, within the densely populated Tárcoles watershed of Costa Rica. Relationships between basin area and percentiles of historic flows are derived as a matrix of monthly flow percentiles and averages that can be transformed into potential flows. The station used to validate the model has limited records and contains apparently abnormal flows. Nonetheless, results indicate considerable success of the model, though it could be further refined and tested with more discharge stations. In turn, the modelling approach could be used to predict monthly flows and their variability within the Tárcoles basin, as well as other countries where information may be lacking.