Designing hydraulic structures, such as culverts, bridges, weirs, and check dams, while planning new flood inundation areas, needs correct assessment of design discharges. In gauged catchments with long time series of discharges, statistical methods are commonly used based on fixed theoretical distributions and on empirical distributions. However, in ungauged catchments, this approach is not possible. In addition to more advanced methods, which are used today, e.g., rainfall–runoff models, much more simple approaches are still needed based on regionalization and empirical models. Thus, the objective of this work is to develop a new empirical model for calculating peak discharge expressed as the median of annual peak discharge (QMED). The innovative aspect of this paper is the use of a new parameter, named landscape hydric potential (LHP), as a descriptor of water storage in catchments. LHP has a crucial role as the descriptor of water storage in catchment and, thus, it has an influence on forming discharges. The work was done in the Upper Vistula basin in the Polish Carpathians. This study was carried out in mountain catchments located in the Upper Vistula basin, in the south part of Poland in in the Polish Carpathians. Results show that the proposed model could provide appropriate calculations in changing climate conditions, as well as when land use is changed. The proposed model is simple and effective; for calculating QMED, it needs only two parameters: catchment area and LHP. Since the model has a significant and high correlation coefficient, it could be used for assessing of QMED in ungauged mountain catchments. The determined form of the empirical equation finds application in the entire Upper Vistula basin, for catchments with a surface area from 24 km2 up to 660 km2.

中文翻译：

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使用景观水势法估算山区未测量集水区中值峰值流量的新经验模型

设计水工结构，如涵洞、桥梁、堰和拦阻坝，同时规划新的洪水淹没区，需要正确评估设计排放量。在具有较长时间序列的计量流域中，通常使用基于固定理论分布和经验分布的统计方法。然而，在未测量的集水区，这种方法是不可能的。除了当今使用的更先进的方法（例如降雨-径流模型）之外，仍然需要基于区域化和经验模型的更简单的方法。因此，这项工作的目的是开发一种新的经验模型，用于计算以年度峰值流量中位数 (QMED) 表示的峰值流量。本文的创新方面是使用了一个新参数，称为景观水势（LHP），作为集水区蓄水量的描述。LHP 作为集水区蓄水量的描述符具有至关重要的作用，因此，它对形成排放有影响。这项工作是在波兰喀尔巴阡山脉的上维斯杜拉盆地完成的。这项研究是在位于波兰南部的波兰喀尔巴阡山脉上维斯杜拉盆地的山区集水区进行的。结果表明，所提出的模型可以在气候条件变化以及土地利用发生变化时提供适当的计算。所提出的模型简单有效；计算 QMED 只需要两个参数：流域面积和 LHP。由于该模型具有显着且高相关系数，可用于评估未测量山区流域的QMED。