NONLINEAR-ANALYSIS OF RIVER FLOW TIME SEQUENCES

Within the field of chaos theory several methods for the analysis of c omplex dynamical systems have recently been proposed. In light of thes e ideas we study the dynamics which control the behavior over time of river flow, investigating the existence of a low-dimension determinist ic component. The present article follows the research undertaken in t he work of Porporato and Ridolfi [1996a] in which some clues as to the existence of chaos were collected. Particular emphasis is given here to the problem of noise and to nonlinear prediction. With regard to th e latter, the benefits obtainable by means of the interpolation of the available time series are reported and the remarkable predictive resu lts attained with this nonlinear method are shown.