Hydrodynamic dispersive and advective processes in watershed responses
Academic Article
Overview
Research
Identity
Additional Document Info
Other
View All
Overview
abstract
A model for estimating the watershed response is presented and used for assessing how the watershed size and spatial variability of the hydrodynamic parameters (i.e., wave celerity and dispersion coefficient) affect the comparative importance of advective processes with respect to hydrodynamic dispersive processes. A parameter was defined to quantify this comparative importance. This parameter represents the fraction of the watershed response variance that is explained by advection. A series of simulations were performed for basins of different sizes and different spatial distributions of their hydrologic parameters. It was found that, for spatially uniform hydrodynamic parameters, the effect of hydrodynamic dispersion decreases compared to that of advection as the watershed size increases, and vice versa; and that, for nonuniform hydrodynamic parameters, the spatial distribution of the parameter values over the watershed, in conjunction with the watershed size, determines which process - advection or hydrodynamic dispersion - prevails. ASCE.
