RAINFALL RUNOFF

PROCESSES
AURELIO
BAUN
BAUTISTA
Runoff

Overland and subsurface flow
components that contribute to the quick
flow in a stream, leaving a watershed
within a time scale of about a day
following surface water input.

Runoff is also used to refer to all water
leaving a watershed, the sum of quick
flow, base flow and groundwater outflow.
Runoff Processes


Precipitation may be in the form of rain or
snow.
Vegetation may intercept some fraction
of precipitation.
Precipitation that penetrates the vegetation is
referred to as throughfall.
A large fraction of intercepted water is
commonly evaporated back to the
atmosphere. There is also flux of water to the
atmosphere through transpiration of the
vegetation and evaporation from soil and
water bodies.
The surface water input available for the generation of
runoff consists of throughfall and snowmelt. This surface
water input may accumulate on the surface in
depression storage, or flow overland towards the streams
as overland flow, or infiltrate into the soil, where it may
flow laterally towards the stream contributing to interflow.
Infiltrated water
may also
percolate
through deeper
soil and rock
layers into the
groundwater.
The water table is the surface below which
the soil and rock is saturated and at pressure
greater than atmospheric. This serves as the
boundary between the saturated zone
containing groundwater and unsaturated
zone.
Immediately above the water table is a
region of soil that is close to saturation, due
to water being held by capillary forces. This
is referred to as the capillary fringe.
Subsurface water, either from interflow or from
groundwater may flow back across the land surface
to add to overland flow. This is referred to as return
flow.
Overland flow and shallower interflow processes that
transport water to the e stream within the time scale
of approximately a day or so are classified as runoff .
RUNOFF GENERATION MECHANISMS

Infiltrated water may:

flow through the matrix of the soil in the
inter-granular pores and small structural
voids.

flow through larger voids referred to as
macropores.
Macropores include pipes that are open
passageways in the soil caused by decaying
roots and burrowing animals.

Macropores also include larger structural
voids within the soil matrix that serve as
preferential pathways for subsurface flow.
Schematic illustration of macropore network being activated due to rise in
groundwater resulting in rapid lateral flow.
The permeability of the soil matrix may
differ between soil horizons and this may lead
to the build up of a saturated wedge above a
soil horizon interface. Water in these saturated
wedges may flow laterally through the soil
matrix, or enter macropores and be carried
rapidly to the stream as subsurface stormflow
in the form of interflow.
Infiltrating water follows preferential pathways and
macropores and may result in increases in moisture
content at depth before saturation or similar
increases in moisture content higher in the soil
profile.
There is a maximum limiting rate at which a soil in a
given condition can absorb surface water input.
This was referred to by Robert E. Horton (1933), one
of the founding fathers of quantitative hydrology,
as the infiltration capacity of the soil, and hence
this mechanism is also called Horton overland flow.
Infiltration excess overland flow occurs anywhere
that surface water input exceeds the infiltration
capaci ty of the surface. This occurs most
frequently in areas devoid of vegetation or
possessing only a thin cover.
Saturation excess overland flow occurs in locations
where infiltrating water completely saturates the
soil profile until there is no space for any further
water to infiltrate. The complete saturation of a soil
profile resulting in the water table rising to the
surface is referred to as saturation from below.
In areas with high infiltration capacities, interflow, or
subsurface storm flow is usually the dominant contributor to
streamflow, especially on steeper terrain or more planar
hillslopes where saturation excess is less likely to occur.
Hydrological Pathways involved in
different runoff generation processes
Physical Factors Affecting
Runoff
The general climatic regime controls the total
volume of runoff in any region through its effect
on the water balance. In a broad sense, over a
time scale long enough that storage changes
average out (are negligible), and over a region
larg e enough or with boundary defined so that
inflows (surface and subsurface) are negligible,
the water balance may be stated as

P = Q + E (1)

where
P=precipitation rate
Q=runoff rate
E=evapotranspiration rate.
This equation indicates that the precipitation
input is disposed of either into runoff or
evapotranspiration. In general the climatic
regime controls the overallproportioning. Here
groundwater recharge supplying baseflow is
included in Q. Because the quantities in
equation (1) must be positive, this equation
places limits on the values of Q and E given any
specific P. Both Q and E are constrained to be
less than P. This may be visualized in a space
where E is plotted versus P.
The domain of valid solutions is below the 1:1 line E=P.
There is in general an upper limit on the possible
evapotranspiration, due to the energy inputs required
to evaporate water. This limit is related to the solar
radiation inputs as well as the capacity of the
atmosphere to transport evaporated water away from
the surface(related to wind and humidity). This limit
has been denoted as Ep (potential
evapotranspiration).
Shows data for four different areas in the U.S. In semi-
arid regions like Arizona the mean annual runoff
decreases with drainage area due to channel
transmission losses. Most runoff is infiltration excess and
the opportunity for infiltration increases as water
progresses down the channel network.
Following regional climatic regime and precipitation
intensity, vegetation, land use, topography and soils,
also exert controls on runoff processes. In arid and
semi-arid regions and those disturbed by humans
(through agriculture, urbanization and mining)
infiltration capacity is a limiting factor and infiltration
excess is the dominantstorm runoff process. In most
humid regions where infiltration isnot a limiting factor
the variable source model of storm runoff is
appropriate. There are important differences within
and betweenhumid regions in the relative importance
of the two major runoff processes at work: subsurface
stormflow and saturation overland flow.

The variable source area concept related to the
occurrence of saturation excess indicates that saturation
overland flow originates, not over the whole watershed, but
over a fraction of it due to local saturation. The most
fundamental topographic property used in hydrology is
contributing area .

Contributing area - the area upslope of any point on a
watershed or topographic surface.

Contributing area may be concentrated as in distinct
river valleys, or dispersed as on smooth surfaces such as
hillslopes. In the dispersed smooth surface case the area
contributing to a point may be a line that theoretically
has an area of zero, in which case it is called specific
catchment area.

Contributing area has units of area [m] and specific
catchment area has units of length [m].

END.