The Best Fitted Distribution for Estimating Annual Peak Flows in Benue River, Upper Benue River Basin Trough

Abstract

Frequency analysis is widely applied for estimating extreme flows and precipitation. However, its merits for applicability based on the various distributions available for different data and purposes have not been clearly established especially for River Benue in the Upper Benue River Basin. The annual peak flows of river Benue were taken at the Jimeta – Yola, bridge gauging station in Adamawa State for a 45 – years record from 1960 – 2004. The record was fitted with Normal, Log-Normal, Gumbel’s Extreme values, Gamma, and Pearson type III distributions. Log- Normal distribution was found most suitable for annual peak flow estimation in the Benue River based on the goodness of fit test using Chi- Square test.