Author(s)

Sivarajah Mylevaganam^1*, Raghavan Srinivasan¹, Vijay P. Singh²

¹Spatial Sciences Laboratory, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA.
²Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA.

This study develops information based on index, and termed hydro-ecological-index, to represent the need of a riverine ecosystem characterized through a biologically relevant flow regime. The flow regime is defined by a set of parameters, called Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration. These parameters are predicted at the catchment scale by a hydrologic model, called Soil and Water Assessment Tool. Then the Maximum Entropy Ordered Weighted Averaging method is employed to aggregate non-commensurable biologically relevant flow regimes to develop hydro-ecological- index at the catchment scale. The resulting index reflects the variability of the need of the riverine ecosystem at catchment scale and thus different catchments can be evaluated and compared.

Entropy, Principle of Maximum Entropy, Riverine Ecosystem, Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration, Maximum Entropy Ordered Weighted Averaging, Soil and Water Assessment Tool

Mylevaganam, S. , Srinivasan, R. and Singh, V. (2015) Ecohydrologically Driven Catchment Evaluation and Prioritization. Open Journal of Applied Sciences, 5, 325-334. doi: 10.4236/ojapps.2015.57033.