Hydrograph

A hydrograph is a graph showing the rate of flow (discharge) versus time past a specific point in a river, or other channel or conduit carrying flow. The rate of flow is typically expressed in cubic meters or cubic feet per second (cms or cfs).

It can also refer to a graph showing the volume of water reaching a particular outfall, or location in a sewerage network. Graphs are commonly used in the design of sewerage, more specifically, the design of surface water sewerage systems and combined sewers.

The discharge is measured at a specific point in a river and is typically time variant.

Types of hydrograph can include:

A stream hydrograph is commonly conceptualized to include a baseflow component and a runoff component. The former represents the relatively steady contribution to stream discharge from groundwater return flow, while the latter represents the additional streamflow contributed by subsurface flow and surface flow/runoff]].

The separation of baseflow from direct runoff in a hydrograph is often of interest to hydrologists, planners, and engineers, as it aids in determining the influence of different hydrologic processes on discharge from the subject catchment. Because the timing, magnitude, and duration of groundwater return flow differs so greatly from that of direct runoff, separating and understanding the influence of these distinct processes is key to analyzing and simulating the likely hydrologic effects of various land use, water use, weather, and climate conditions and changes.

However, the process of separating “baseflow” from “direct runoff” is an inexact science. In part this is because these two concepts are not, themselves, entirely distinct and unrelated. Return flow from groundwater increases along with overland flow from saturated or impermeable areas during and after a storm event; moreover, a particular water molecule can easily move through both pathways en route to the watershed outlet. Therefore, separation of a purely “baseflow component” in a hydrograph is a somewhat arbitrary exercise. Nevertheless, various graphical and empirical techniques have been developed to perform these hydrograph separations. The separation of base flow from direct runoff can be an important first step in developing rainfall-runoff models for a watershed of interest—for example, in developing and applying unit hydrographs as described below.

A unit hydrograph (UH) is the hypothetical unit response of a watershed (in terms of runoff volume and timing) to a unit input of rainfall. It can be defined as the direct runoff hydrograph (DRH) resulting from one unit (e.g., one cm or one inch) of effective rainfall occurring uniformly over that watershed at a uniform rate over a unit period of time. As a UH is applicable only to the direct runoff component of a hydrograph (i.e., surface runoff), a separate determination of the baseflow component is required.

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Wikipedia