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Physical Controls on Annual Water Balance

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1 Physical Controls on Annual Water Balance
September 8, 2011 Physical Controls on Annual Water Balance

2 Guiding Concept “most” hydologic problems are concerned with defining the partitioning of the water balance across a range of spatial (channel, hillslope, catchment, continent…) and temporal (hour, day, season, annual…) scales

3 Budyko Theoretical Bounds on Annual Water Balance
Review: Watershed hydrologic partitioning controlled by climate P = R + E P and E temporally and spatially uniform e(t) = ep(t), for S > 0 = 0 for S = 0 q(t) = 0 for S<Sb = p(t) - ep(t) for S=Sb and p(t) > ep(t) How is runoff represented in this curve? or

4 Effect of Seasonality p(t) and ep(t) vary
pronounced wet and dry seasons Cyclical monsoons Consider the case of pronounced wet and dry seasons

5 wet and dry seasonality
Arid watersheds (Ep>P): 2 cases: P<Sb P>Sb

6 wet and dry seasonality
Humid watersheds (Ep<P): 2 cases: Ep<Sb Ep>Sb

7 Seasonality and Budyko
In all 4 scenarios, Sb becomes important…Storage capacity influences annual water balance (Milly 1994) How does storage impact runoff?

8 At smaller time scales (dS <>0)
Internal dynamics become important Soil moisture control on ET Transient storage (unsteady drainage, or leaky bucket) Subsurface flow Classic example of “lumped parameter” model

9 Summary Influences on Water Balance
Theoretical derivations for Climatic dryness index R = Ep/P Seasonality index   Ratio of event/inter-event time scales tb/tr  Storminess (no. of storms per year n = t/(tr+tb) Catchment storage capacity W=Sb/P Speed of drainage of catchment tr/tc

10 Questions to keep in mind for semester
How do climate and landscape properties interact to partition the water balance across ranges of spatial and temporal scales.

11 Homework for Tuesday Using this plot, describe examples of the following controls on water balance 1. Actual ET on annual balance 2. Soil water storage capacity on annual balance 3. Soil properties on sub-annual balance 4. Vegetation on sub-annual balance 5. Bedrock leakage on annual balance 6. Bedrock leakage on sub-annual balance


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