Catchment infiltration II: Contributing areas

Abstract

This study considers two issues of interest to the hydrologic and geographical information systems community. One deals with identifying the spatial distribution of infiltration and runoff contributing areas. The other addresses process modelling within a GIS framework. The study operates on the premise that partitioning of precipitation into runoff or infiltration depends on rainfall intensity and on soil properties. The problem is that neither local rainfall intensity, nor soil properties such as infiltration capacity and macroporosity are known well enough for all points of a catchment and need to be estimated. We infer local intensity from the interpolated distribution of cumulated rain depths over the catchment and record duration at the official met site. Measured values of sorptivity and hydraulic conductivity define infiltration. Negative head infiltration describes macroporosity. To scale‐up measured point values to larger areas and to model infiltration and macropore continuity at a catchment scale we use geostatistical kriging and conditional simulation together with standard GIS techniques of overlay manipulation. Results delineate areas contributing to runoff and infiltration and relate them to macroporosity. By intersecting overlays of precipitation with those of infiltration we create alternate GIS masks targeting specific portions of the watershed as either runoff or infiltration contributing zones. Choice of cell size and time interval define the scales of averaging for the application. Kriged surfaces illustrate the distribution of catchment infiltration, while conditional simulation provides a mechanism to define model uncertainty.