Lab 8 D103,10.30-12.

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Genesius Hartoko GEOG 311
301336708 TA: Max Hurson

Output figure 1 and the codes that I used

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Lab 8 D103,10.30-12.30
Genesius Hartoko GEOG 311
301336708 TA: Max Hurson

Output figure 2 and the codes that I used:

1. Are the watersheds able to store all the rain that falls during the wet season, or does there
appear to be an 'upper limit' to the amount of water that each watershed can store? Are these
upper limits the same, or different, for the two watersheds? Reference your plot from above to
answer this question.

Based on the result, there is an upper limit to the amount of water that each watershed can
store during wet season (especially stored during the beginning of rainy or wet seasons). This
upper limit is different for the two watersheds in the study with elder creek that has increased

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Lab 8 D103,10.30-12.30
Genesius Hartoko GEOG 311
301336708 TA: Max Hurson
storage over time even after runoff activation while dry creek storage shows bigger increase in
discharge and minimal storage increase.

2. In your own words, give a definition for Sayama et al's term "activation" (pg 3903)? For what
value of dV do the two watersheds appear to "activate"? Why is "activation" so important in the
consideration of Sayama et al's central question: How much water can a watershed store? In
your answer to this question, think back to our discussion on runoff generation mechanisms.

From the article, activation can be defined as the amount of water that is required to generate
runoff and it is associated with the total storage change. Based on my result, Dry creek
watershed started to activate when the dV reached 200 mm and Elder Creek started to
activate when the dV reached around 450 mm. It is important to determine the amount of
water that can be stored in watershed storage because it can give the approximation about
the amount of water that each storage can store during wet season before generating runoff.
It is also important to know that watershed with steeper slopes generate larger storage
increases after activation during wet season than watershed that is located in milder slopes

3. According to the Sayama et al (2011) "hydrologically active bedrock" hypothesis, which

watershed would you predict has a steeper average hillslope gradient, Dry Creek or Elder Creek?
Why?

I predicted that Elder Creek (located in permeable bedrock) had steeper hillslope gradient
because the value of dV was still increasing even after the activation time and the values of
water discharge for Elder creek was generally lower than Dry creek which indicating that Elder
creek watershed was located in steeper hillslope gradient than Dry Creek.

4. List one or two additional physical properties of a watershed that might be more important than
the "hydrologically active bedrock" mechanism as an explanation for differences in watershed
storage between neighboring sites (think about some of the assumptions Sayama et al. relied on
when explaining their hypothesis).

The bedrock permeability is more important because every watersheds have different type of
bedrock, it can be less permeable, that can yield different result in the amount of water that is
stored in watershed, therefore watershed in gentle slope can actually store more water if the
bedrock is more permeable than steeper slopes. Water flow rates can also be more important
since the flow at steeper slopes is more responsive than milder slopes that resulting in limited
dynamic water storage change in steeper slopes, while the difference in hydrological
connectivity within catchments also plays important role for determining storage change.