In your situation, I would look to see if there are any long term stream discharge data within same physiographic, climatic zone to connect to.  And there are perhaps several other data sources such as rainfall, land use, soiil mapping, DEM of topography, vegetation types, etc.  

I assume from question that you have perhaps one instantaneous discharge reading, and that is insufficient in its self to develop detail, and as suggested, without flow time series of a year, or at least through a few rainfall and runoff cycles that would allow comparison to neighboring long term stream gauging stations, it is hard to develop much from limited data.  With little data available, the ability to develop or select a procedure to estimate or model becomes dependent largely on your expertise.   

So it might be best to search within your area of interest, if there is any other data sources available that you might apply or papers that have applied hydrologic models within your area.  Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your life goals, having less data will require you to learn more, do more, try more and a greater commitment to the subject.  If this is just a class and of no long term career interest, then you will search out a model that needs limited data to run it.  But if it is a career interest or lives and property are relying on your analysis, you cannot be satisfied with the data you presently have, and much do more study, perhaps more data collection, contacts with professional hydrologists or water agencies for information and suggestions.  If your are training under a hydrology professor, he may help you or he may be suggesting to learn this subject which will lead you to become knowledgeable or develop expertise, the professor may expect a learning process by reading literature, measurements, trial by error, and evaluating options and selecting the best approach achievable under the constraints.  Even if models are used, some degree of verification, validation and adjustment is typically appropriate.  

I uploaded a paper from the mid-1990s on applying for water rights based on limited data on the Caribbean National Forest.  What I was able to use was the flow duration curves from available stream gauging stations, and when taking stream data readings of flow in the field, I was able to relate to the approximate flow regime of the instantaneous measurement to the long term data, making adjustment for drainage size as needed.  If a career goal, it is no better time to try to search for any available stream and rainfall or if in snow/glaciaer area, those gauging station records, as well as other pertinent data on land use, vegetation, soils, temperature, humidity, wells (groundwater), GIS layers, etc. so a water balance can be estimated.  

In the stream, there are visual indicators of flow that can be helpful, such as aquatic insects, channel type and geometry, linear profile, bankfull indicators, flood indicators, substrate, vegetation, etc. that can give information or clues useful for evaluation and possibly interpretation.  Even learning how to measure streams and associated data mentioned may be important for the circumstances presented if this is a career choice.  Modeling is one of the tools that may be used, but models requiring no or limited data entry and no history of producing reliable results for the area of interest can be problematic in trying to suggest their meaning, again relying on the competence of the modeler in documenting the data available, model selected, and results, and expert in reading the final report to decipher if it was just an exercise in running a model with limited data, or if the information generated has some meaning and application.

A key to remember is that models are designed to generate numbers, and they can look so good and convincing, but need validation.  The professional or expert, or University professor must be able to take everything into account before using or grading the results.  As long as your documentations are excellent, they should have ample information on how much weight to give your effort.

This is essentially a Prediction in Ungauged Basins question, and there has been a lot of literature on this, particularly since 2003. This would require a method of estimating the parameter values for a rainfall-runoff model for the catchment, which may be possible if you have a number of gauged sites in the area.

Your 1 data point could be used as a constraint, but it will generally not be a very informative one. If all you have is 1 UAV image, it is difficult to see how this can be very helpful.

You could generate an estimate of the annual flow, though you should attempt to estimate the uncertainty as this will likely be large.

Hi Susen,

Yes you can predict yearly discharge discharge by using your those data. The one time data can be used for calibration process. You can use  IFAS tool that most of the data source from satellite which can be downloaded from internet.

http://www.icharm.pwri.go.jp/research/ifas/

good luck

sigit

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for your time in responding to my question, I wanted the above question as a means to calculate the discharge in the ungauged basin(As Barry Croke guessed). In case of my country(Nepal), the datas(rainfall,discharge,etc) are unavailable for many rivers and this has led to faulty design of different water related structures. Therefore, I wanted to write a paper based on the above case to address the problem and compare with the already available long term discharge data of the given river(Long term data is already present for the mentioned river).

The use of UAV was basically to get the stage of river for the known discharge and it was actually in the driest period, so that if we could somehow model the river discharge there was a possibility that we could assign the discharge to a certain river stage.

There is already one method used in Nepal(Medium Irrigation Project(MIP)), which uses only one time discharge data to predict the annual flow, but the variance of the annual discharge obtain are quite high. I based my concept on MIP method but I wanted a greater amount of accuracy. From what I have read from your feedback I think the application of the following step will help to get a better measure of the discharge(CORRECT ME IF I DON'T GET IT RIGHT):

1) To use the satellite rainfall data as rainfall input to a certain model along with other catchment parameters from remote sensing to calculate the discharge(The data of rainfall for mountain regions is not so great, as I have heard not sure though)

2) Then use the discharge collected from the river as validating the calculation. More the discharge collected better the validation.

The one time discharge measurement will not be of much use; you could however attempt a rough estimate of mean annual discharge from channel geometry and for specific bed sediment properties using the width-discharge relations developed from streams in the same geologic setting, following the example of Olsterkamp and Hedman (1982, see reference below). I’m assuming you could estimate the active channel width from the UAV image. If stream channel geomorphology and climate in the area you are studying are similar to the Missouri River Basin (by a stroke of good fortune)  you could consider using their equations, with caution.

And if you can also identify the top edge of in-channel bars (depositional bars) from the UAV and thus estimate mean depth (height from bed to top of depositional bar) you could try the method suggested by Moore (1968, see reference below). There are definitely limitations to this approach, however, you can read about these in Osterkamp and Hedman (1982).

Osterkamp, W.R. and Hedman, E.R., 1982, Perennial-streamflow characteristics related to channel geometry and sediment in Missouri River basin, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1242, 37 p. available online at https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/pp1242

Moore, Donald O., Estimating mean runoff in ungagged semiarid areas, Bulletin of the International Association of Scientific Hydrology, v. 13, no. 1, p. 29-39, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02626666809493565 , available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02626666809493565

i guess one time discharge data is not sufficient. even if you apply by any means , it is not going to offer you reliable outcomes. Better to seek and serve some more dense data whatever available for prevailing physiography where u like to adopt your concept..