Hydrology and modelisation

a quick outlook
Etienne Leblois
Cemagref Lyon

1
Basic aspects of hydrology

2
 The aim of hydrology
• Determine how much water will be in a
given location and condition

3
 The hydrological cycle
• A continuum, broken by the observator into
– storages
• water bodies
• with possible internal evolutionary laws
– water fluxes
• inside or between water bodies
• associated to hydrological processes

4
 Main freshwater storages
• Ranked here by increasing time constant
– atmosphere
– soil moisture (non saturated area)
– rivers
– snowpack
– lakes ; reservoirs
– groundwater (saturated area)
– icepack
5
 Main freshwater fluxes
• Precipitation
• (actual) Evapotranspiration
• Infiltration and seepage (= ex filtration)
• Runoff (on slopes)
• Discharge (in rivers)

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 Hydrological processes
• Water fluxes are linked to hydrological
processes
– not only fluxes between water bodies
– also internal evolution of water bodies
• A process is an elementary behaviour
– that can described as a whole
– whose level of formalisation may vary
– under control of various factors
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Sample processes

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 Sample process
runoff formation
• according to Horton
– runoff occurs where and when
rain rate exceeds infiltration capacity
• according to Capus, Hewlett, Beven, ...
– runoff occurs where and when
rain falls on saturated areas
• importance of the soil structure

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 Sample process
runoff collection to discharge
• Overland flow (on slopes)
– Gullies, connectivity topics
– Importance of relative location of land use
– Importance of subrogate features of land use
(direction of ploughing)

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 Sample process
underground flow
• The continuous model
– unsatured zone : the Richards equation
– satured zone : the Darcy equation
• local formula
• integrated form for alluvial aquifers
• integrated form for constrained aquifer
– The problem of parameters estimation
• importance of K(, x, y, z) (a tensor)

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 Sample process
underground flow
• Preferential pathes
– biological macropores
– pipes
– roots
• Impervious layers
– bottom of ploughing area

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Catchment

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 An key hydrological object
the catchment (= the basin)
• An outlet
• The river network upstream
• Slopes
– both side of the rivers
– up to the water divides
• Includes
– surface and subsurface storages
in relation to the river
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 Why study catchments ?
• the best possible system to study as far as
geophysical fluxes as considered
– one input (rain, other atmospheric conditions)
– one output (discharge at the outlet)
• the best possible unit for effective
management
– what I do here is my problem

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 The catchment : limits
• A fully explicit, exhaustive description is
impossible because of
– the fractal nature of the river network
– the fractal nature of the topography
– the partially unreachable description of the
under ground
– the unsteady character of the topography and
soil properties at detailed scale
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 The catchment
limits (continued…)
• The catchment is
– a point (the outlet)
– a set of lines (the river network)
– an area (interacting with the atmosphere),
– a volume (including the underground).
• Implementation of such an object in a GIS
is not straightforward.

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 The catchment
limits (continued…)
• The definition of a catchment is outlet
dependent.
• Two gauging stations define either nested
or non-nested catchments
• Data out of many catchments are part of a
data hierarchy that must sometimes be
considered explicitly (discharge mapping).

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 The catchments
limits (continued…)
• Some problems seem point oriented...
– « how can I reduced floods here »
… but must be handled considering all the
processes
– upstream (causes) and
– downstream (consequencies of options to take).
Often we have to « zoom out » to have a grasp
at the problem as a whole.
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 The catchments
limits (continued…)
• It is usually not an administrative division
• The concept may break down
– karstic areas
– flat, human dominated areas

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 Hydrological monographies
• A balanced description of a catchment
(hydrological monography) can be very
interesting.
• It will not solve all possible and unexpected
questions.

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 A problem oriented description
of a catchment
• needs a variety of choices to be done
– selecting the processes relevant to the problem
– the scale of the features to explicitely take into
account.
– the time to be considered
• the abduction of non-relevant details has to
remain in mind.

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Rain-Discharge transformation
within a catchment

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 Production and transfert
functions
• « Production »
– relates the gross precipitation over the catchment to
the net precipitation that is to flow through the outlet.
– non-flowing water is only considered as a soil
moisture controling factor, influencing the soil
behaviour under further rains.
• « Transfert »
– relates the produced « net precipitation » to the
discharge.
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 About this scheme
• It is common choice to
– upload the production function with all the non-
linearity of the rain-discharge transformation.
– consider the transfert function as linear.
• This approximation may be valid for heavy
rains

25
 Conceptual approaches to the
transfert aspects
• Unit Hydrograph (Sherman, 1932)
– the transfert function is assumed linear.
– the structure of the non-linear production
function remains author-dependant.
– parameters for both parts are identified from a
joint pair of long rainfall/discharge time series.

26
 Conceptual approaches to the
transfert aspects
• Geomorphologic Unit Hydrograph :
– an improvement from the previous approach
– the shape of the unit hydrograph is related to
distances and slopes along the runoff pathways
from the catchment to the outlet
– this gives clearer constraints to what the
production function can be

27
 Limits to these approaches
• Isotopes evaluations show that most of the
water of the flood has been in the soil long
before the begin of the rain.

28
 Hydraulically based description
of the transfert aspects
• Continuity equation
• Dynamic equation
– Head
• potential energy + kinetic energy
– Head losses
• along the stream (energy loss in turbulence,
interactions between the water and the reach)
• localised (in hydraulic jumps from torrential to fluvial
conditions
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 Various levels of description for
hydraulic transfer
• in general, PDE equations
• 3D equations (Navier Stokes)
– small scale studies like geomorphology, flow
around a bridge
• 2D equations (Barré Saint-Venant)
– where overland flow is most relevant : dam
breakes, flooding of broader areas with non
negligible speed in the flooded part
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 Various levels of description for
hydraulic transfer (continued)
• 1D+storages (Barré Saint-Venant) :
– where the flooded area is broken in independent
storages, where speed is negligible
• 1D (Barré Saint-Venant) :
– where streamflow is concentrated in the minor
riverbed (no flooding).
– including dam breaks, working spillways,
moving hydraulic jumps, ...
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 Various levels of description for
hydraulic transfer (continued)
• Simplified 1D equations :
– Diffusive wave approximation :
• flood diffusion in gentle, sub-horizontal rivers
– Cinematic wave approximation :
• flood propagation in steep rivers or lateral slopes

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 Governing equations for
hydraulic transfer (continued)
• 1D, steady-state approximation :
– if time variations are negligible. Mostly broad,
gentle rivers,
– a important step for text-books in hydraulics (clear,
intuitive relation of results to energetic
consideration and limits)
• 1D, uniform approximation :
– to be considered only in regular, chenalized reaches

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Hydrology of floods

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 Hydrology of floods
• To predict floods, or to assess flood hazard?
– To predict
• Given a current stage of water and observed or
predicted rain, guess the shape, time of arrival and
water stage to occur in the next future at the interest
point.
– To assess
• Given a observed discharge time-serie, give probability
of a given flood characteristic (peak flow, duration,
volume,…) to be over-seeded
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 Flood warning systems
• who
– civil servants ; river authorities ; majors ;
meteorologists ; hydrologists
• how
– real time data collection
– quick data processing, mostly empirical models
or analogues
– 365 days, 24 H communication system to people
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 Flood warning systems
(continued)
• what
– technical choice of a flood index to predict, level
of confidence
• to who
– police, municipality representatives, everybody ?
• what to say
– how clear the warning messages ?
– readiness to cooperate ?
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 A personal interpretation
• some rivers have long time constants
– gentle rain, so progressive saturation ; broad basins, so
long hydraulic transferts
• some rivers have short time constants
– steep, small catchments ; convective storms.
• this
– enable different kind of human measures
– induced an “hydrology of flash floods” to exist
• but hydrology is one !
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 Flood management approaches
• flood
– is a natural event
– can be characterised as an random event
=> alea
• flooding
– can yield damages
– this depends on the sensitivity of land use
=> vulnerability

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 The dammage approach :
principle
• considers vulnerability as the cost of
damages
• to minimise by
– protective measures (levees),
– storing or evacuating waters via various works,
• as far as monetary evaluation proves
efficient.

40
 The dammage approach :
drawback
• Due to ...
– the probabilistic nature of events,
– the short memory of human beings,
– teleconnections of local actions and basin-wide
effects,
• … spontaneous local management exhibits a drift
towards heavy works that appears to be
unsustainable at the basin scale (spiral of
corrective measures).
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The alea / vulnerability approach
• vulnerability of each type of landuse is a
socially determined, possibly negociated
acceptance for flooding
• some areas, like marshes, may have a
positive demand for flooding.

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The alea / vulnerability approach
• This approach induce a description of the basin
as a set of areas
– the one are in a lack of protection (red)
– the other one are “underflooded” (green).
• Relevant decision board can decide
– to freeze some areas for them not to turn red soon, to
modify land use, or to spatially modify the alea
pattern with minimal river works, turning areas red
to green at the “hydrological expenses” of green

43
The alea / vulnerability approach
• This can be done
– via administrative measures, or
– via local negociations
• including payment to insurance companies
• according to the cultural habits of each
community.

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What is the problem with
hydrology ?

45
 Definitively lacking data
• rain known via
– rain gauges select 400 cm2 in 100 km2
– weather radar
• spatial pattern, but little quantitative consistency
• potential evapotranspiration known via
– observed meteorological estimation of control
factors (temperature, wind, …), at 100 km grid
size
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 Definitively lacking data
• real evapotranspiration known
– only via water balance estimation at the field or
basin scale
• discharge
– known at 15 % in some gaging stations (500
working stations in France).
– include non registered man-made perturbations that
make the assessment of the intrinsic behaviour of
the catchment very difficult
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 The hierarchy of processes
is unstable
• a process can easily take precedence on an
other because of
– the quasi-systematic non linearity of processes
– their sensitivity to the initial conditions
• effect of water contents
• effect of soil structure

48
 A catchment
• can have a behaviour that is completely
dominated by some usually neglected process
• as a behaviour that is not uniquely determine
by the contents, but also by their spatial
organisation
• comparison with a recepie
– we know the taste of each ingedient.
– we can NOT predict the taste of the meal

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Examples of atypical conditions :
• Zebra bush in sahelian regions
• Mulch
• Snow redistribution by the wind
• Groundwater sustained rivers
• Man-made linear patterns in landscape

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 A built-in link with other
specialities
• Soil physics and plant physiology
• Water quality, hydrobiology
• River geomorphology
• Human and social sciences
• Management and economy, law, politics

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Hydrological modelisation

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 Scientific reasons
to build models
• Blackboard tool
– formalisation of concepts
– possible formal checking
– knowledge and concepts
• Data interpretation
• Behavioural simulation
– explicitation of non-obvious structure effects

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 Operationnal reasons
to build models
• answering specialized questions
– assessing impacts of land-use change
• testing general management strategies

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 Scope of the model ?
• which area ?
• which level of detail ?
– are the details useful ?
– will we be able to gather the details ?
• which time scope
– season ?
– duration ?
– climate and social scenarios ?
55
 Scope of the model
(continued…) ?
• which hydrologically related features do we
need ?
– floods ; water quantity ; water quality ;
hydrobiology ; river geomorphology ; water
uses ; land use
• choice of independant and dependant
features ?

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 Some critical points in
hydrological modelisation
• Assessing the dominant processes
– Is there a link to what I am interested to ?
• Choosing time and space scales
• Choosing a topology
• Is an object oriented approach usefull ?
– How to separate objects ?
– How to specify the relation between objects ?

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 Models relationship to causality
• Deterministic models : deductive models
• Statistical models : inductive models
– probabilistic models
• directly on distributions
– stochastic models
• yielding time-series as output

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 Lumped models
• boxes flowing the ones into the others
through pipes...
• need for calibration
• useful as reference catchments in
applications involving reference catchments
– detection of changes

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 Steps in elaborating a lumped,
conceptual hydrologic model
• identification (which structure ?)
• calibration (value of parameters)
• validation (check)
• documentation of limits
– physical limits
– numerical limits

60
 Distributed models
• according to a regular grid
– an old-fashioned, quite efficient way
• according to a dominant process-based grid
– slopes and contours
• according to an homogeneous area concept
– valid only in man-made landscape
– terrific topology
• a general tool would need the tree forms to be easily
mixed !

61
 Adressing sub-grid variability
• mostly for regular grid distributed models
• physical parameters unknown and spatially
variable at the sub-grid resolution
• effective parameters approach :
– equations are kept same as in the detailed scale,
but with (possibly other) numerical values that
account for macroscopic scale behaviour

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 Adressing sub-grid variability
• parametrization approach
– given a scheme of what the subgrid variability
is, a stochastic approach derives a set of
macroscopically suitable equations that have a
form that is not the same as the one of the small
scale

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 Adressing sub-grid variability
• inverse approach
– parameters are estimated backward from
overall behaviour of the catchment
• integrated measurement
– remote sensors are supposedly able to evaluate
some characteristic parameters of the surface
(moisture, rugosity, slope…) directly at a scale
that is suitable for distributed modeling
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 Explicit physics and
parametrisation
• part of explicit physics quite modest.
• unresolved part
– accounted for via behavioural routines
– tend to be the core of models (not just in well localized
“parametrisation boxes”).
• models who clame to be deterministic (for they are
distributed) may be completely behavioural when
one consider the scheme implemented at the cell
size.
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Examples of hydrological models
• square grid, physically based
– SHE
• contour and slope grid, physically based
– TOPOG

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Examples of hydrological models
• square grid, conceptual
– Stanford IV, Cequeau, ModCou
• lumped, conceptual
– CREC, GR4J, Gardenia
• semi-lumped, specialised to saturation
runoff : Topmodel

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What could be a typical problem
for FIRMA modelling ?

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 The chesnut valley
• Background
– Privas, Ardèche dept, France
– Key industry : chesnut processing (Christmas,
etc.)
– On the Ouvèze river, a tributary to the Rhône
– Some agricultural opportunities in the valley,
downstream from Privas

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 The chesnut valley
• Today state
– two tributaries of the Ouveze are used for providing
water to the chesnut industry.
– Water shortages in Privas
– Ouveze dry off in summer in Privas
– Ouveze is merely chesnut waste donwstream from
Privas ; biology near to 0 down to the Rhône.
– Agriculture does not really start, because lacking
water
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 The chesnut valley
• Spontaneous sectorial remediation projects
– for problems in Privas
• building dams on the tributaries for an enhancement
of water availability in Privas ; maybe, to sustain
summer discharge of the Ouveze
– for agriculture
• building a irrigation pipe from the Rhône

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 The chesnut valley
• An idea for integrated management
• irrigation pipe to go up to Privas
• chesnut waste to be diverted to the agricultural areas
• Expected benefits
• abundant water to the industry and inhabitants
• dam project can be forgotten
• river will biologically recover
• A need
• evaluate this and others scheme quickly
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