TY - JOUR ID - 61475 TI - ‏Spatiotemporal assessment of the hydrologic river health index variations in Ardabil Province Watersheds JO - Iranian journal of Ecohydrology JA - IJE LA - en SN - 2423-6098 AU - Khorooshi, Saeid AU - Mostafazadeh, Raoof AU - Esmali Ouri, Abazar AU - Raoof, Majid AD - MA Student, Department of Range and Watershed Management, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Iran AD - Associate Professor, Department of Water Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Iran Y1 - 2017 PY - 2017 VL - 4 IS - 2 SP - 379 EP - 393 KW - Surface waters KW - Mann-Kendall Test KW - discharge variations KW - Flow regime KW - hydrologic index DO - 10.22059/ije.2017.61475 N2 - Assessment of river health can be used as a tool for environmental flow estimation and quantification of the amount, timing and required water flow quality for permanence of river ecosystems. The current  study aims to determine the spatial and temporal changes of rivers health with an emphasis on hydrologic indicators by using statistical tests in Ardabil province. For this purpose, the daily discharge data of 24 hydrometric stations with the period of 1367-1390 was used for river health analysis. In addition, the non-parametric Mann-Kendall test and Sen's estimator method were performed to determine the presence or absence of positive and negative trends at different statistical levels. Also, after dividing the existed study span into four periods, the Kruskal–Wallis test was applied for the investigation of temporal variations and the existence of differences between short-term periods. Results showed a significant decreasing trend of river health in studied stations (13 stations from 24 stations). Sula and Firuzabad stations had significant increasing trend and in other remained stations, no significant trend was identified. According to the results obtained from the maps of spatial variability of river health, maximum and minimum change of river health indicators were observed  in the central part, and northern and southern parts of the province, respectively. Generally, it can be said that, recently, the overall changes as well as reduction in hydrologic flow health have been more compared to the past which can be associated with increase of exploitation intensity from surface water resources as well as reduction in the water yield due to climate change. UR - https://ije.ut.ac.ir/article_61475.html L1 - https://ije.ut.ac.ir/article_61475_ccea78aab568564a66df44db34240d4e.pdf ER -