Computing effective discharge with S-PLUS

Effective discharge is defined as the streamflow responsible for transporting the most sediment over the long term. Since the stream channel is a product of material that is transported by the stream, the effective discharge is interpreted to be the flow rate that is most responsible for creating the form of the channel itself. It is therefore important to understand the factors that control the effective discharge in streams in order to develop a plan for water use that does not adversely affect the stream's transport regime and the riparian ecosystem. We use S-PLUS for Windows, an object-oriented programming and visualization environment? to compute the magnitude and frequency of effective discharge for the Red River, a headwater stream in Idaho. The built-in analytical functions and graphical tools make S-PLUS an efficient tool for this and many other types of hydrologic analyses. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.