Catchment-water residence time: Understanding the relation between landscape organization and flow pathways

P.A.A. Troch, P.W. Bogaart, R. Uijlenhoet, A.D. Berne, J. Boll, J. McDonnell, J. Kirchner

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingAbstract

Abstract

Hydrological predictions in ungauged basins (PUB) are highly uncertain. This is caused by incomplete process understanding, heterogeneity of the land surface and subsurface, spatiotemporal variability in the driving forces, inadequate model structure and scaling issues. This paper discusses a theory for hillslope scale subsurface flow travel time distributions, and presents ideas for an associated suite of models, that resolves this problem by combining new insights into the driving hydrological mechanisms, the use of auxiliary data that is readily available such as runoff chemistry and hillslope topography, with efficient mathematical tools such as dimensional and similarity analysis. Our discussion starts from two basic observations: 1) hillslopes act as the main filter between rainfall and stream flow. The hydrological behavior of hillslopes is to a large extent controlled by the form (geomorphology) and internal hydraulic structure (soil properties) of these hillslopes. 2) current, fully distributed, physically based, hydrological models are limited in their applicability because of inherent problems (mainly parameter uncertainty and inadequate process representation) associated with such a model setup. On the other hand, much auxiliary data such as stream chemistry, high-resolution topography, and soil maps could provide useful insights into the dominant hydrological processes, water and solute residence times, and spatial patterns of controlling parameters. This data, while readily available for many catchments, is currently not fully exploited within hydrology. Our final goal is to construct a hydrological theory of travel time distributions that is 1) respecting the internal structure of landscapes, as observed, 2) has a simple model structure to avoid the curse of dimensionality, 3) uses auxiliary information to constrain water flow pathways and reduces the problem of parameter uncertainty, and 4) provides measures of hydrological similarity that assists regionalization..
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationVIIth IAHS Scientific Assembly, Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, 3-9 April 2005
Place of PublicationFoz do Iguaçu, Brazil
Pagesnp
Publication statusPublished - 2005

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Catchment-water residence time: Understanding the relation between landscape organization and flow pathways'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this