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Hydrograph
The hydrograph describes the whole time history, not only the peak value, of the changing of flow rate from a catchment due to a rainfall event rather than just the peak flow. Rainfall (precipitation) loss and effective rainfall Rainfall loss: due to vegetation interception, soil infiltration etc. Effective rainfall: portion which contributes the surface runoff
Hydrograph
The curve of flow rate starts before the rainfall event , where only a base flow exists. The base flow is the groundwater contribution which go on discharging more and more slowly with time. Its trend without rainfall is close to an exponential curve
Qt = Q0 e
The base flow exists during the rainfall event. Its trend is not exponential due to the recharge of the groundwater by the precipitation. may be estimated, though it may not be directly measured
Hydrograph
Surface runoff represented by the area under the hydrograph minus the base flow The Run-off start rising when the effective rainfall starts until reaching peak value (rising limb); After the peak value appear, the effective rainfall continues to contribute the runoff, even after the rain stops, until the inflection point; After the inflection point, it is generally considered that the runoff comes from the water temporarily stored in the soil (interflow)
The principle of superposition applies to hydrographs resulting from contiguous and/or isolated periods of uniform-intensity net rain.
Extend the recession curves. A and B can be defined at the locations where the fitted recession curves start leaving the hydrograph
For different duration T, TUH is different. It is necessary to derive TUH in terms of different duration T.
Not only suitable for changing a long duration unitgraph to a shorter duration unitgraph , but also suitable for changing a short duration unigraph to a longer duration unitgraph
U (T , t ) =
d ( St ) t ( St , 0 St ,T ) U (0, t ) = T dt
IUH at any time
IUH is a unique demonstration of a particular catchments response to rain, independent of duration; TUH is the response to rain of a particular duration The ordinate of a n-hour unitgraph at time t is the average ordinate of the IUH for n-hour before t.
Since the discharge represented by a TUH is directly proportional to effective rainfall, the percentages in unit times will remain constant whatever the effective rainfall
Distribution graph
Less precise than the TUH but is much better suited for iterative processes of derivation.
Mass curves
Reservoir full again
The total volumes of runoff from the beginning of the time serial to time (t) against the time.
Can be obtained by using the hydrograph. For each time interval, calculate the volumes by the product of discharge and time interval, then add each new volume to the previous total. Very important for reservoir design
Required constant water demand Maximum required reservoir capacity to ensure water demand
Flow-duration curves
Shows the proportion of time during which the discharge there equals or exceeds certain values. Upstream storage, such as lake, reservoirs, will modify the flow duration curves Discharge in the figure may be expressed in terms of Q/Qm or BFI.
Qm: mean flow discharge; BFI; base flow index, which is defined as the baseflow area/hydrograph area