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Paper   IPM / P / 8324
School of Physics
  Title:   Fractal Analysis of River Flow Fluctuations
  Author(s): 
1.  M. S. Movahed
2.  E. Hermanis
  Status:   Published
  Journal: Physica A
  Vol.:  387
  Year:  2008
  Pages:   915-932
  Supported by:  IPM
  Abstract:
We use some fractal analysis methods to study river flow fluctuations. The result of the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MF-DFA) shows that there are two crossover timescales in the fluctuation function. We discuss how the existence of the crossover timescales are related to a sinusoidal trend. The first crossover is due to the seasonal trend and the value of second ones is approximately equal to the well known cycle of sun activity. Using Fourier detrended fluctuation analysis, the sinusoidal trend is eliminated. The value of Hurst exponent of the runoff water of rivers without the sinusoidal trend show a long range correlation behavior. For the Daugava river the value of Hurst exponent is 0.52±0.01 and also we find that these fluctuations have multifractal nature. Comparing the MF-DFA results for the remaining data set of Daugava river to those for shuffled and surrogate series, we conclude that its multifractal nature is almost entirely due to the broadness of probability density function.

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