Saint Mary’s University

School of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology

Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya

Hydrograph Analysis

Rainfall that falls on the watershed makes its way from west to
east across the area and finally flows out at the outlet.
Meteorological factors, physiographic or watershed factors, and
human factors (i.e., land use cover) all contribute to the response
at the outlet.

The concept assumes that the hydrograph is built up by various

contributions from areas of equal travel time from the outlet.
Isochrones define the subareas and travel times and thus a
complex rainfall event can be analyzed by computing products
of rainfall P i and area A i .

The hydrograph peak occurs when all areas of the watershed are
contributing to the outlet.

Often the time duration of rainfall is usually much shorter than

the time base of the hydrograph.

An interesting concept is that of uniform rainfall occurring for

an extended time over a small watershed. If rainfall continues at
a constant intensity for a very long period, storage is filled at
some point, and then an equilibrium discharge can be reached
such that inflow and outflow are equal.

The condition of equilibrium discharge is seldom observed in nature,

except for very small basins or parking lots, because of natural
variations in rainfall intensity and duration.

Some precipitation may percolate to the water table, usually located 10

to 100 feet below the ground surface in porous media, and may slowly
contribute flow to a stream if the water table intersects the stream
channel. Base flow in a natural channel is due to these contributions
from shallow ground water and contributes some flow to a hydrograph.

In large natural watersheds or river basins, base flow may be a

significant fraction of streamflow, while it can often be neglected in
small, urbanized streams where overland flow predominates. Base flow
can be separated from the total storm hydrograph by a number of
methods in order to derive the direct runoff (DRO) hydrograph.

The shape and timing of the DRO hydrograph are related to the duration and intensity of rainfall as well as the various
factors governing the watershed area.

The contributions also depend on the level of soil moisture storage SD vs. field capacity F of the soil, which is
defined as the amount of water held in place after excess gravitational water has drained.

No overland runoff occurs for the case i 6 f, since all rainfall infiltrates, and interflow and ground water flow are zero
if F 6 SD, since soil moisture storage exists and can handle additional inflows. In this first case, no measurable
hydrograph is produced, and all rainfall infiltrates as in the case of a small rainfall under very dry soil conditions.

Channel precipitation is usually a very small fraction of total flow rate and is usually neglected in practice. In urban
areas, the infiltration component may be minor where concrete surfaces and channels dominate the response. In more

1|Hydro-322 Prepared By: Engr. Juniffen I. Tacadena

 Saint Mary’s University
School of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya

forested and natural watersheds, infiltration and surface roughness may be major factors and significantly alter the
hydrograph.

Infiltration is one of the most complex of hydrologic phenomena. Horton (1933) showed that when the rainfall rate i
exceeds the infiltration rate f , water infiltrates the surface soils at a rate that generally decreases with time.

These rates are usually reported in inches per hour. For any given soil, a limiting curve defines the maximum possible
rates of infiltration vs. time. The rate of infiltration depends in a complex way on rainfall intensity, soil type, surface
condition, and vegetal cover. Sand will generally infiltrate at much greater rates than silt or clay. Infiltration from a
large basin can represent as much as 25% to 30% of rainfall, but usually is in the 5% to 15% range.

The F index is the simplest infiltration method and is calculated by finding the loss difference between gross
precipitation and observed surface runoff measured as a hydrograph.

DRO may include some interflow, whereas base flow is considered to be mostly from contributing ground water. In
most urban streams, base flow will be a relatively small component, usually less than a few percent, while it can be a
significant component in a large river basin. Several techniques exist to separate DRO from base flow based on the
analysis of ground water recession curves. In many cases, the recession curve can be described by an exponential
depletion equation of the general form:

Several storms should be used in order to develop a master depletion curve (Mc- Cuen, 2005). In practice, there are
three simpler methods for handling base flow separation. The base flow recession can be extended forward under the
peak of the hydrograph, starting with the point of lowest discharge and then extending at constant discharge to a point
on the recession limb.

The inflection point on the recession is assumed to be the point where the DRO ends. A second method is the concave
method, where base flow is extended under the peak of the hydrograph and then is connected to the inflection point
on the recession curve.

The separation methods all suffer the disadvantage of being arbitrary and somewhat inaccurate. At present, base flow
separation is more an art than a science. In many cases of practical interest such as urban drainage, base flow is often
neglected because it represents such a small component. Base flow is usually more important in natural streams and
large rivers because of the contribution along the banks from a water table.

Surface runoff phenomena have been discussed above, and the distribution of gross rainfall can be divided into
components of infiltration, depression storage, detention storage, and direct runoff. We can write the continuity
equation for this process as:

2|Hydro-322 Prepared By: Engr. Juniffen I. Tacadena

 Saint Mary’s University
School of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya

Example: Computing Net Storm Rainfall

Solution

First we develop the net rainfall hyetograph. Then, we add this to the hydrograph plot. Note that the rainfall excess
becomes 3.5 inches total with a duration of 4 hr, since rainfall equals infiltration during the final hour of rainfall.

The volume of runoff is equal to the area under the hydrograph. To determine the volume of runoff, we can use
Summation of Qdt. This estimates the volume. Calculations are tabulated in the accompanying table.

3|Hydro-322 Prepared By: Engr. Juniffen I. Tacadena

 Saint Mary’s University
School of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya

Other methods that could be used include mathematical methods of integration, such as the trapezoidal rule and
Simpson’s rule. Both methods approximate the area under the graph hydrograph between two values of time. If base
flow were included in the hydrograph, we would have to subtract it first from the flow values at each time step before
computing volumes of direct runoff.

Once rainfall excess has been determined for a watershed, it then becomes a central problem of engineering hydrology
to convert it into direct runoff, DRO. The resulting hydrograph is basically built up from contributions of overland
flow and channel flow arriving at different times from all points in the watershed. The relative times of travel of
overland and channel flow are related to the size of the watershed; overland flow time is more significant in a small
watershed, whereas time of travel in the channel predominates in a large watershed.

4|Hydro-322 Prepared By: Engr. Juniffen I. Tacadena