Shapour Koohestani

Floods are one of the greatest natural disasters, especially in arid land ecosystems. These phenomena damage fragile ecosystems and human societies. If construction of various structures and the development of towns and villages are based on flood forecasting and information, the risk of damage from flooding can be reduced to a large extent. We analyzed the frequency of flooding in the Loot Basin, central Iran, using annual peak discharge series and the method of maximum L‐moment. We found that the distribution based on the H test was homogeneous and the ZDIST statistic selected a regional Log Pearson Type III (LPIII) distribution. The results also showed a high correlation coefficient between the return period and flood discharge, and it was possible to estimate the relationship between flood discharge and area parameters. These methods can be used for areas which lack observational data or statistics