Baseflow index (BFI) — BFI • UKFE

Calculates the baseflow index from a daily mean flow series

Usage

BFI(Q, PlotTitle = "Baseflow plot", Plot = TRUE, ReturnData = FALSE)

Arguments

Q: the daily mean flow series. Numeric vector
PlotTitle: the title of the plot. The default is "Baseflow plot"
Plot: a logical argument with a default of TRUE. If TRUE the daily flow is plotted with the baseflow highlighted.
ReturnData: Logical statement with a default of FALSE. If TRUE, the result is a list with BFI as the first element and the second element is a dataframe with the baseflow and flow data.

Value

the baseflow index and if Plot equals TRUE, a plot showing the flow time series (black) and the associated baseflow (red). If ReturnData is set to TRUE, the result is a list with two elements. The first is the BFI, the second is a data frame with the flow data and baseflow data.

Details

The baseflow index is calculated using the method outlined in Gustard, A. Bullock, A. Dixon, J. M.. (1992). Low flow estimation in the United Kingdom. Wallingford, Institute of Hydrology, 88pp. (IH Report No.108)

Author

Anthony Hammond

Examples

# Calculate the BFI from the daily discharge at Kingston upon Thames,
# which is in column three of the ThamesPQ data
BFI(ThamesPQ[, 3])

#> [1] 0.5814248