Relationships Among Surface Water Resources in the WR90, WR2005 and WR2012 Datasets of South Africa Using Mean Annual Runoff of Quaternary Catchments

Abstract

The study used mainly regression models as predictive tools among mean annual runoff (MAR) pertaining to hydrological dataset a of surface water resources (WR) of South Africa; i.e. WR90, WR2005 and WR2012. MAR is the hydrological catchment response. It was found that linear models were generally suitable to correlate any pair of datasets. The level of linearity was measured by the coefficient of determination (R²), hence correlation coefficient. The relatively high values of R² of the models suggested that no drastic climatic variability occurred in the South African hydrology, i.e. with regard to the quaternary catchment (QC) of the different water management areas (WMAs). Hence, linear mathematical relationships could well describe the temporal evolution of surface water resources in South Africa, in terms of MAR as hydrological response, and indirectly could give an indication of the climate variability between the different datasets.