Hydrology and Earth System Sciences www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net 1027-5606 1607-7938 12 6 2008 10.5194/hess-12-1295-2008 http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/12/1295/2008/ http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/12/1295/2008/hess-12-1295-2008.html http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/12/1295/2008/hess-12-1295-2008.pdf 1295 1307 2008-12-01 Runoff thresholds in derived flood frequency distributions A. Gioia a.gioia@poliba.it V. Iacobellis S. Manfreda M. Fiorentino Dipartimento di Ingegneria delle Acque e di Chimica, Politecnico di Bari, Bari, Italy Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Fisica dell'Ambiente, Università degli Studi della Basilicata, Potenza, Italy In general, different mechanisms may be identified as responsible of runoff generation during ordinary events or extraordinary events at the basin scale. In a simplified scheme these mechanisms may be represented by different runoff thresholds. In this context, the derived flood frequency model, based on the effect of partial contributing areas on peak flow, proposed by Iacobellis and Fiorentino (2000), was generalized by providing a new formulation of the derived distribution where two runoff components are explicitly considered. The model was tested on a group of basins in Southern Italy characterized by annual maximum flood distributions highly skewed. The application of the proposed model provided good results in terms of descriptive ability. Model parameters were also found to be well correlated with geomorphological basin descriptors. Two different threshold mechanisms, associated respectively to ordinary and extraordinary events, were identified. 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