In Hewletts original concept of variable source areas it was implied that these would be contiguous with the stream

channels. Later work has sought to establish that areas of saturation overland flow may occur widely within the catchment area, often in locations far removed from the stream channels and that, furthermore, if such disjunct areas have effective hydrological connections with the valley bottoms or lower slopes they, too, may contribute quickflow to the stream channel. Leaving aside those (exceptional) areas where because of severe compaction, sparse vegetation cover of thin, degraded soils, genuine Hortonian overland flow may indeed produced as described by Betson (1964), the search for source areas of quickflow became linked rapidly with evidence of flow convergence. Kirkby and Chorley (1967) suggested three probable types of location where convergence of flow might lead to the surface saturation and to saturation overland flow, in addition to contiguous channel-side areas. Figure 7.7 shows that these are : (a) slope concavities in plan where convergence

GAMBAR 7.7

leads to subsurface flow rates that may exceed the transmission capacity of the porous medium and lead, therefore, to the emergence of flow at the soil surface in the central area of concavities; (b) slope concavities in section where, assuming uniform hydraulic conductivity throughout the section, subsurface flow rates wiil be directly proportional to the hydraulic gradient so that water will enter a concavity from upslope areas more rapidly that it can leave downslope; and (c) areas of thinner soil whose water holding and transmitting capacity is low. A fourth type of flow convergence, illustrated in Fig 7.7d, occurs as water perlocates vertically through a soil profile. Partly because of the reduced hydraulic gradient as the flowpath of the perlocating water lengthens and partly because most soils, whether layered or not, exhibit a reduction of hydraulic conductivity with depth, leading to the development of layer, layers, of temporary saturation. This has been a well-documented phenomenon for many years (cf. Kidder and Lytle, 1949). Normally the downslope hydraulic gradient will result in the removal of this accumulation of water as throughflow before the build-up of saturation reaches the soil surface. In flat areas, however, or in slopingareas having very high rainfall amounts and intensities,

saturation overland flow will be produced. This has been found especially where an impending layer occurs at shallow depths in the soil profile, as in the pseudo-gley soils of central Europe, so that water accumulates on Bt-horizon in the soil profile during wet periods, or with highintensity rainfallon the upper slopes of a tropical rainforest catchment investigated by Bonell and Gilmour (1978). As in most recently glaciated areas, soils in Britain are notoriously shallow. Elsewhere, where soils are thicker or of ore uniform depth, or where vegetation cover is denser, it will be necessary to seek other linkage mechanisms. Thus more than 40 years ago in the southern Appalachians, USA, where soils average 2m in depth, and where no surface flow was observed but at time when it seemed inconvenciable that the acknowleged slow movement of water through the weathered mantle could deliver an appreciable amount of water to the stream channel during a storm period, Hursh (1944) proposed his pipeflow theory in which turbulent flow through large, quasi-cylindrical conveyances, such as animal burrows or decayed root channels, could lead subsurface stormflow rapidly through the slope material. This process was confirmed for a forested catchment in Luxembourg by Bonnel et al. (1984). However, biotic voids have been regarded by some hydrologist as pseudo-pipes in contrast to the more widespread and hydorlogically important pipes formed by hydraulic and hydrological processes (Jones, 1981). The high velocity of conduited, macropore subsurface flow means that the water arriving in the stream channel by this route will almost certainly be new water. However, field experiments in a variety of environments using natural isotope tracers appear increasingly to support the view of Hewlett that old water dominates the storm runoff hydrograph, even in areas where the excistence of macropores is well established. It therefore seems that the excistence of macropore is not on itself evidence of a significant role in the runoffprocess. Instead, the reexamination of older ideas about the possible role of diffuse, rather that conduited, subsurface flow, including both shallow throughflow and deeper groundwater flow, now appears to offer a more plausible basis for explaining aspescts of streamflow response to precipitation. Initially resistance to the notion of throughflow occurring in substantial quantities reflected, first, a firmly rooted belief that water movement along such a flow path would be far too slow to deliver quickflow to the stream channel and that only

overland flow could provide a reasonable explanation of the storm hydrograph and, second, an implicit faith in the vertically of the infiltration-perlocation route from the soil surface to the water table. Not until an improved understanding had developed of the anisotropic nature of the soil profile was it realized that the vertical flow path may in the fact be least-likely option and that instead water responds to changing hydraulic gradients and flows more or less parallel to the slope surface, depending on local moisture contents, soil conductivities and the steepness of gradients (Hewlett and Troendle, 1975). The thatched roof analogy Zaslavsky and Sinai (1981) is a helpful explanatory aid (Fig 7.8). No hydrologist, having measured the infiltration characteristics of bundles of straw, would recommend their use as a roofing material. And yet, even in the heaviest rain, the bulding remains dry, no water runs over the thatch as overland flow, there is no groundwater and no evidence of zones of temporary saturation, i.e all the rainfall is evacuated along the narrow layer of that thatch itself. The thatched roof works because the alignment of the straw imparts a preferential permeability along the stems and because the roof slopes; it would not work if the straw bundles were placed vertically or if the roof were flat. In the case of the soil which covers the ground surface we know that, whether or not impending layer exists beneath the surface, there is normally a preferential hydraulic conductivity through the more open-textured upper layers parallel to the surface so that where the soil occurs on a uniform slope it would act hidrologically like a thatched roof. Hewletts experiments with sloping soil models indeed indicated water flow paths resembling the behaviour of a thatched roof, and led Hewlett to prepare the diagram show in Fig. 7.9 . note that Hewlett shows no overland flow and no deep groundwater recharge ; this implies
Gambar 7.8 and 7.9

All rainfall infiltrates and is then transmitted through the soil profile, contributing prefentially to storm flow with upslope rainfall recharging the soil-moisture store in preparation for succeeding days and weeks of baseflow whereas downslope rainfall and channel precipitation provide most of the storm flow. Although it may be appropriate now to partially reinterpret this pioneering scheme, there seems little doubt that, in due course, this diagram will be seen to represent one of the single greatest conceptual advances in the history of hydrology.

7.4.3 The role of groundwater Understandably, therefore, the potentially important role of groundwater in explaining the storm hydrograph has been a matter of interest and investigation for many years. Indeed, De Zeeuw (1966) introduced the concept of variable source areas without being aware of Hewletts work. He argued that in Netherlands the response of drain and ditch flow to precipitation depends on the number of drains and ditches that are deep enough to cut the water table and that will, therefore, receive the more rapid field discharge compare with the slower seepage groundwater flow. As groundwater level rise, so more drains and ditches receive the quicker local flow. Subsequently, De Vries (1976, 1977) demonstrated the role of groundwater flow in the evolution of stream networks in the Netherlands and Ernst (1978) provided a quantitative model of such system. OBrien (1977) show that groundwater accounted for 93 per cent of the total annual discharge from two small wetland catchments in Massacusethss, USA, and Sklash and Farvolden (1979) argued from tracer and piezometric measurement in two small Canadian catchments for the acceptance of the active, responsive and significant role of groundwater in storm runoff. In highly permeable catchments and of course in the lowland areas of larger drainage basins, groundwater has long been accepted as the major component of streamflow, athough in such areas there has been an implied association between the magnitude of the groundwater contribution and the diminution of the response of rivers to precipitation. The concern here is rather with the situation where groundwater may make a major contribution to the storm hydrograph in a wide range of hydrogeological and relief conditions and where the response of rivers to precipitation is both rapid and pronounced. Hursh and Brater (1941) had indeed

advocated such a role for groundwater near the stream channels, although some three decades were to elapse before other investigators used field and particularly tracer measurement to support the view that groundwater is a major and active component of storm runoff. The question of how groundwater could appear sufficiently rapidly in the stream channelswas plausibly resolved by Sklash and Farvolden (1979) in terms of a large and rapid increase in groundwater potential near the stream channels, reflecting the formation of a groundwater ridge. The resulting steepened hydraulic gradient and increased groundwater discharge area together would then be capable of producing large groundwater contributions to the stream channel. A similar groundwater ridge has been observed by Ragan (1968) and Hewlett (1969) who referred to an ephemeral rise in the groundwater table near the stream channel which helps produce the storm hydrograph . Zaltsberg (1987) analysed 15 years of data for

Gambar 7.10

the Wilson Creek basin in Manitoba and showed that, on average, groundwater contributed about 30 per cent to summer storm runoffs.

7.4.4 Exception to the Hewlett hypothesis ? The strengths of the Hewlett hypothesis are that it accommodates a broad diversity of field observations of runoff, that it incorporates realistically the important dynamic aspects of the runoff process, including the extreme case of the car-park hydrograph at one end of the range to the deep porous basin, with stable channel length, in which total runoff is derived almost entirely from subsurface flow components at the other end of the range. Horton overland flow should, in the other words, be considered properly as an example of Hewlett saturated overland flow when infiltration rates are so much lower than rainfall intensities that vertical flow convergence results in rapid surface ponding. However, some hydrologists prefer to treat it as a different process in

those environmental conditions where infiltrations rates are exceptionally low or rainfall intensities exceptionally high. Thus, as Morin and Jarosch (1977) observed, for most types of soil in the Mediterranean area and other semi-arrid areas where infiltration rate drops rapidly during rainstorms, runoff consists of overland flow and contains virtually no subsurface or throughflow components. In these areas of predominantly sodic soil the rapid drop in infiltration rate is due mainly to the formation of crust whose hydraulic conductivity is several order of magnitude lower than the subsurface conductivity (McIntyre, 1958 ; Morin et al.,1981). The crust forms as a result of both a physical disintegration of the soil aggregates and their compaction by raindrop impact and also achemical dispersion of the clay particles and the formation of a clogged layer (Agassi et al.,1985). Tropical rainforest environments are commonly associated with high rainfall intensities and are believed by some hydrologists to offer conditions conducive to the formation of Horton overland flow. However, in a long-term intensive catchment experiment in north east Queensland , where daily falls in excess of 250 mm are common, Bonell et al. (1983a,b, 1987a, 1987b) found that widespread overland flow produced in undisturbed forest area was saturation overland flow resulting from saturation in the top soil layers caused when rainfall rate exceeded the saturated hydraulic conductivity of the profile below 0.2 m. As a results, no change in runoff hydrology occurred following logging of the forest, although there was a massive increase in the production of suspended solids. Cassels et al. (1985) considered that the major significant difference between runoff processes in temperate and tropical forest catchments is that, in the latter, wet areas are widespread throughout the catchments during storm events rather than being concentrated in riparian areas. Because of the high wet-season soil moisture contents such areas can redevelop almost instantaneously with the onset of intense storms. As a result of surface outflows from these widespread areas, quickflow inevitably accounts for a large proportion of total streamflow. Interestingly, though, field experiments in a small tropical catchment in Brazil by Nortcliffe and Thornes (1984) showed that quickflow there is almost entirely the result of saturated overland flow from floodplain areas immediately adjacent to the stream channel. The authors felt that these findings did not support the view that a dichotomy exists between alternative models,

but rather that a variety of flow-generating mechanism will occur in different environments and in the same environment at different times.

7.4.5 Hydrograph separation In many hydrological analyses it is necessary to separate the volume of discharge under the hydrograph into a quickflow and a slowflow component. Many techniques of hydrograph analysis were predicated on the assumption that it was possible to separate genetically the components of flow on the basis that overland flow would arrive most rapidly at the stream channel, throughflow next, and groundwater flow at the slowest rate.
GAMBAR 7.11

The analysis of runoff variations in this chapter, however, has demonstrated that quickflow may have taken a surface and/or a subsurface route to the stream channel and that slowflow or baseflow may consists of thrugflow from the soil profile and/or deeper groundwater flow. On the basis of time of arrival, therefore, it is feasible to make an arbitrary separation only between quickflow and slowflow. A widely used approach is that proposed by Hewlett and Hibbert (1967) in which quickflow is separated from delayed flow by a line of constant slope (0.05 c.f.s. per square mile per hour or 0.000546 cumecs per square kilometer per hour or 0.0472 mm/day) projected from the beginning of a stream rise to the point where it intersects the falling limb of the hydrogen (Fig. 7.11). This value was chosen because it was greater than the normal diurnal fluctuation of flow, gave a relatively short time base to the largest single-peaked hydrographs in the study area and permitted large storms separated by a period of about three days to be calculated as separated events. The same values has, in fact, been used by subsequent workers in entirely different areas, cf. Walling (1971) in South-West England. Hornbeck (1973)

used a value of 1.25 mm/day in New Hampshire and Woodruff and Hewlett (1970) slightly modified the technique for use in the wider area of the eastern USA. Other arbitrary separation techniques are illustrated in Fig. 7.12. For example, quickflow and baseflow may be separated by drawing a straight line from the sharp break of slope X were discharge begins to increase to some arbitrarily chosen point (Z) on the recession limb of the hydrograph. Point Z may be located at the point of greatest curvature near the lower end of the recession limb (line 1) or at a given time

GAMBAR 7.12

Interval after the occurrence of peak flow (line 2). The time interval (N) may be determined from hydrograph inspection or from a simple empirical equation : N =A0.2 where N is in days and A is the drainage area in square miles (Linsley et al. 1958). Alternatively, the pre-storm baseflow recession curve (AX) may be projected forwards in time to a point beneath the peak of the hydrograph and then connected by another straight line to the arbitrary chosen point Z (line 3). Finally, the simplest approximation is that of a horizontal line drawn from point X to its intersection with the recession limb (line 4). In conclusion, although the genetic separation of the storm hydrograph has been shown to be unrealistic at the present time, it may yet prove feasible, with further research developments, to identify the phase relationships of the various components of the hydrograph, either by measurements of water temperature or by analysis of water chemistry. Early work on the chemical analysis of runoff was done by Russian workers (Voronkov, 1963) and a useful method was used to calculate the groundwater flow component of total streamflow.

More recently, Anderson and Burt (1982), using specific conductances as an index of solute concentration, employed a chemical mixing model of the Pinder and Jones type to predict throyghflow and overland flow in the catchment where both flow components were also measured. The conclusion was that the model was too simple to predict accurately a complex runoff response. Similarly, Calles (1985)used conductivity to determine the small groundwater contribution to a small stream in Sweden. Duysing et al. (19830), however, found that the use only of conductivity measurements gave limited or even misleading information about hydrochemical processes. For a forested lowland catchment in the Netherlands their statistical analyses showed significant relationships and different behaviour of three group of solutes : K, NH4 , NO3/Mg, Na, Cl/Ca, Si, SO4 , each group having a different response to rainfall. On this basis they were able to distinguish three types of runoff event, i.e. winter and spring storms generating direct runoff and baseflow, summer and autumn storms generating only direct runoff and snow melt runoff.

7.5 Daily flow variations For many purposes variations of runoff with time are studied using runoff values for uniform calendar time intervals (days, weeks, months, years) rather than for runoff events of non-uniform duration. In the case of major continental rivers, where the passage of flood peaks through the system is measured in months, weekly flow values are often appropriate. For the comparatively small catchments of the British Isles, however, which response rapidly tp precipitation/melt events, hydrographs of daily flow values provide a more useful visual comparison of runoff variations. Flow conditions in the Dee and Thames are clearly intermediate in character. This long-term relationship between quickflow and baseflow provides a basis for classifying streams as ephemeral, intermittent or perennial. Ephemeral streams consist solely of quickflow and therefore exist only during and immediately after a precipitation/melt event. There are usually no permanent or well-defined channels and the water table is always below the bed of the stream. Ephemeral streams ara therefore typical of arid and semi-arid areas and in these conditions are characterized by large transmission losses, as flood waves, generated by storm

rainfall, reduce downstream as they are absorbed by the dry stream beds (Lane 1980). In the 150 km2 Walnut Gulch catchment in Arizona only about 15 per cent of the water entering the channels as runoff actually leaves the catchment as streamflow (Renard 1979). Intermittent streams, which flow during the wet season and dry up during the season of drought, consist mainly of quickflow but baseflow makes some contribution during the wet season, when the water table rises above the bed of the stream. A particular case occurs in high-latitude areas when flow ceases as groundwater freezes during the winter. Perennial streams flow throughout the year because, even during the most prolonged dry spell, the water table is always above the bed of the stream, so that groundwater flow can make a continuous contribution to total runoff.