Professional Documents
Culture Documents
BSC HYDROLOGY, Runoff
BSC HYDROLOGY, Runoff
• RUNOFF
• Catchment characteristics
• Runoff hydrographs
• Implications on water availability
• Implications on catchment management
Definitions
Interflow-lateral movement of
water in the vadose zone
Streamflow
Processes
- All processes can occur at the same time
- distinguish between:
- runoff production (the component of the rainfall that
generates runoff = Peffective)
- runoff routing (the temporal distribution of the effective
rainfall)
RUNOFF
- Hydraulic roughness
- Impervious area
- Infiltration capacity
CATCHMENT CHARACTERISTICS
AREA
- The catchment can be subdivided into the pervious and impervious
area. The pervious area allows for soil infiltration while the
impervious area does not.
INFILTRATION
- It is the rate of entry of water into the ground. The rate and
quantity of water which infiltrates is a function of the soil
type, soil moisture, soil permeability, groundcover, drainage
conditions, depth of water table, and intensity and volume of
precipitation.
RUNOFF
The simplest model of runoff is the RATIONAL EQUATION:
Q CIA
Q = Runoff rate, C = Rational Coefficient, A = Catchment Area, I =
Intensity of rainfall
Q=P-E-Qgw+ S
Where:
P = Total volume of ppt
Q = Total volume of rainfall excess (Runoff)
E = Total volume of evapotranspiration
Qgw = Total volume of infiltration/deep groundwater recharge
∆S= Total volume of abstraction (Surface storage)
Storage S
Deep Runoff Q
groundwater
recharge Qgw
Q=P-E-Qgw+ S
HYDROGRAPH
- A HYDROGRAPH is a graph of FLOW RATE vs TIME for a specific
conduit
convolution
HYDROGRAPH
Runoff hydrograph
A unit hydrograph for a given catchment shows the flow resulting from
unit effective rainfall in unit time on the catchment, e.g. the flow
following, say, 10 mm effective rainfall falling in 1 hour.
TIME TO PEAK (tp): The time interval from the start of rainfall excess to
the peak of the resulting hydrograph
HYDROGRAPH PROPERTIES
TIME OF CONCENTRATION (tc): The time from the end of rainfall excess
to the inflection point (change of slope) on the recession curve. Also
the longest time for water to flow to a discharge point from any point
in the catchment.
TIME BASE (tb): Time from the beginning to the end of surface runoff
HYDROGRAPH RECORDS
- Discharge records are normally reported as daily flow rates.
- For rainfall excess passing from a catchment in less than a day, the
hydrograph time must be in hours or minutes
- Flow rate measurements are a useful aid in predicting peak flow rates
and volume discharges
CATCHMENT CHARACTERISTICS
DRAINAGE SYSTEM AND
LAND COVER
- After initial abstraction, water
flows over land to a natural
or man-made drainage
system.
STREAM CONFIGURATION
- The type and density of the
drainage system will have an
influence on the shape of the
hydrograph at the outlet.
- Dendritic system
- Trellis system
- Radial system
- Multi basin system
- Meandering system
- Braided system
- Anabranching system
- Reticulating system
ANNUAL HYDROGRAPHS
PERENNIAL STREAMS
- Rarely have zero flow volumes
- Have relatively long recession times
- Have dependable water yield potentials during the year. Water yield is
sustained by groundwater influent to the stream
- Groundwater table is always maintained above the bottom of the stream
ANNUAL HYDROGRAPHS
INTERMITTENT STREAMS
- Have limited groundwater storage and release water at faster rates.
- Have shorter recession times and discharges fall to zero during
extended dry periods.
- Baseflow and interflow ONLY exists during and just after a heavy
rainfall period
- Water yield is primarily based on surface runoff
ANNUAL HYDROGRAPHS
EPHEMERAL STREAMS
- In areas where the bed and side walls of a drainage channel are
dominated by impervious soils, the streams have neither baseflow nor
interflow
- Groundwater table is always below the stream’s bottom
- In the event of river runoff, the stream actually recharges the
groundwater from the stream bed.
- This stream type is not dependant on water yields
Applications of hydrograph theory