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A simplified model for estimating field‐scale surface runoff hydrographs
Author(s) -
Morbidelli Renato,
Corradini Corrado,
Govindaraju Rao S.
Publication year - 2006
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/hyp.6345
Subject(s) - hydrograph , kinematic wave , infiltration (hvac) , surface runoff , hydrology (agriculture) , spatial variability , environmental science , watershed , runoff model , monte carlo method , soil science , geology , geotechnical engineering , meteorology , mathematics , computer science , statistics , ecology , physics , machine learning , biology
The problem of obtaining field‐scale surface response to rainfall events is complicated by the spatial variability of infiltration characteristics of the soil and rainfall. In this paper, we develop and test a simplified model for generating surface runoff over fields with spatial variation in both rainfall rate and saturated hydraulic conductivities. The model is able to represent the effects of local variation in infiltration, as well as the run‐on effect that controls infiltration of excess water from saturated upstream areas. The effective rainfall excess is routed to the slope outlet using a simplified solution of the kinematic wave approximation. Model results are compared to averaged hydrographs from numerically‐intensive Monte–Carlo simulations for observed and design rainfall events and soil patterns that are typical of Central Italy. The simplified model is found to yield satisfactory results at a relatively small computational expense. A proposal to include a simple channel routing scheme is also presented as a prelude to extend this conceptualization to watershed scales. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.