UNIT HYDROGRAPH DERIVED FROM A SPATIALLY DISTRIBUTED VELOCITY FIELD Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • A unit hydrograph model is proposed in which the watershed is decomposed into subareas which are individual cells or zones of neighbouring cells. The unit hydrograph is found for each subarea and the response at the outlet to excess rainfall on each subarea is summed to produce the watershed runoff hydrograph. The cell to cell flow path to the watershed outlet is determined from a digital elevation model. A constant flow velocity is assigned to each cell and the time lag between subarea input and response at the watershed outlet is found by integrating the flow time along the path from the subarea to the outlet. The response function for a subarea is modelled as a lagged linear reservoir in which the flow time is equal to the sum of a time of translation and an average residence time in the reservoir. It is shown that the assumption of a spatially varying, but time-invariant, velocity field underlying this model produces a linear system model for all subareas whose outputs can be summed in the manner indicated. An example application is presented for the 870 km2Severn watershed at Plynlimon in Wales using a 50 m digital elevation model in which the cell velocity is calculated by modifying an average watershed velocity according to the terrain slope and the drainage area of each cell. The resulting model reasonably reproduces the observed unit hydrograph.

published proceedings

  • Hydrological Processes

author list (cited authors)

  • MAIDMENT, D. R., OLIVERA, F., CALVER, A., EATHERALL, A., & FRACZEK, W.

citation count

  • 122

complete list of authors

  • MAIDMENT, DR||OLIVERA, F||CALVER, A||EATHERALL, A||FRACZEK, W

publication date

  • June 1996

publisher