The Chindwin River is located between latitude 2206-2600 north and longitude 95940818-9542 east and covers a catchment area of 113.4800 km2 in northwestern region of Myanmar (Fig. 1). With a length of 985 km, it is the third largest river and one of the country's main water resources. It is the largest tributary of the famous Ayeyarwaddy River, one of the major rivers of Asia. The Chindwin Basin is economically and ecologically important to the development of the country as a whole. With its tributaries, the Chindwin constitutes an important transport artery and also connects the basin with the main economically developed areas of the country. In the Chindwin Basin there are key biodiversity areas such as the Hukaung Valley and Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuaries, as well as important conservation areas such as the Upper Chindwin Catchment Corridor and the Lower Chindwin Forest Corridor, which host a important population of species in danger of extinction. animals (NCEA 2009). With an inadequate density of 20,000 km2 per station, the Chindwin River is exposed to frequent flood risks, a problematic natural factor linked to its important role in the national social economy. According to the Myanmar Department of Meteorology and Hydrology, since 1965, floods in the Chindwin Basin have been most frequent in July and August, contributing 72% of the total number of floods in the basin. Every year, at one place or the other, the Chindwin basin is hit by severe floods due to high intensity of rainfall during the southwest monsoon. Recent floods are threatening property, assets, human lives and ecological biodiversity in the region. Although the stream of other tributaries passes through the entire ca...... middle of paper...... layers of the basin area. As one of the major factors contributing to flood generation, the isohyetal rainfall map was prepared using rainfall data at 34 locations; 11 of these are stations observed in the basin with a 46-year daily record (1965-2011). Annual mean precipitation data for the remaining stations were available from WorldClim-Global Climate Data (http://www.worldclim.org). An ordinary Kriging method with GIS was applied to produce the average annual rainfall. Kriging, a geostatistical method, uses the weights of surrounding measured values to predict values at unmeasured locations. The Kriging estimate is expressed as follows: F = ∑_(i=1)^n▒W_i f_i (2)Where F is the prediction of the continuous variable of interest (f), n the number of dispersion points, fi the observed value value at point i, and W is the weighting coefficient for each dispersed point.
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