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The information content theory for the estimation of the topographic index distribution used in TOPMODEL
Author(s) -
MENDICINO GIUSEPPE,
SOLE AURELIA
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
hydrological processes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.222
H-Index - 161
eISSN - 1099-1085
pISSN - 0885-6087
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-1085(199707)11:9<1099::aid-hyp547>3.0.co;2-f
Subject(s) - surface runoff , flood myth , hydrology (agriculture) , environmental science , entropy (arrow of time) , scale (ratio) , precipitation , spatial distribution , index (typography) , geology , meteorology , remote sensing , cartography , geography , computer science , ecology , physics , geotechnical engineering , archaeology , quantum mechanics , world wide web , biology
This paper analyses the significance of the entropy concept in the topography parameterization within the model TOPMODEL proposed by Beven and Kirkby (1979), by means of the hydrological behaviour of an experimental basin in southern Italy. For a significant number of flood events recorded at the basin outlet, the performance of TOPMODEL for different spatial distributions of the topographic index, ln( a /tan β), has been observed. Performance is related to the information content estimated as an entropy measure, corresponding to each of the spatial distributions of the topographic index, with the aim of identifying the procedures most suitable to represent the hydrological process of rainfall–runoff. The results obtained have shown that for flood events corresponding to brief, heavy precipitation, some procedures provide better performances than others. Moreover, these improvements are justified by greater information content in the corresponding spatial distributions of the topographic index. Finally, TOPMODEL performances for some procedures have been analysed, varying the resolution scale of the topographic index. For analogous hydrological performances, scale change produced variations in some of the subsurface hydraulic parameters. These variations were proportional to a spatial variability measure of the topographic index distribution, derived from the corresponding information content. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.