Determination of Discharge Cycles of the South Morava River (Serbia)

Abstract

Possibilities of using water resources, their quality and availability in the world represent one of the most complex and very current scientific and practical topic in numerous research of the last decades. The studies on the variability and fluctuations of river discharge values are especially important due to emphasized vulnerability of rivers to climate changes. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to determine the existence of possible cycles in changes of the values of annual and seasonal river discharges of the South Morava River in Serbia. In addition to determine the trend of changes in the values of the indicator for the period 1946-2020, statistical procedures of autocorrelation and spectral analysis, for studying the possible repetition of the time series of particular cycle, were applied. The results indicated the existence of a certain cyclicity, which was correlated with the most important factor, variation of the precipitation amount. The obtained results present the base for further research that would include examining the repeatability of extreme values, as a particularly important for forecasting the occurrence and frequency of flood and drought waves.