Abstract
The present study deals with the similarity of catchments, which is a preliminary investigation before performing various water resource analyses and computations regarding other catchments, e.g., catchments’ similarity may be utilized in the context of analogous calculations of river flows in catchments without measured flows. In this paper, the penalization method of evaluating similarity is proposed; this method is appropriate for tasks in which fewer catchments are analyzed for engineering purposes. In addition to the various physical characteristics of the catchment, the “catchment’s calibrability” property is also formulated and evaluated. A methodology that used specific flows from catchments in a case study from Slovakia successfully verified the proposed penalization method. This verification confirmed that physical similarity, as evaluated using the proposed penalization methodology, also helps to identify hydrological similarity, i.e., finding the most similar catchment to a given catchment in terms of the rainfall-runoff process. Such a finding can be helpful, e.g., in the computation of the mentioned flows in ungauged catchments. Determining unmeasured flows can help to solve many engineering tasks, such as various technical calculations during the design of small reservoirs, defining the potential of a given stream for supplying irrigation, flood protection, etc.
Highlights
The similarity of catchments is an intensively researched issue, examining how it can be determined and how it is possible to deduce from the physical similarity of catchments the similarity concerning the formation of runoff from them
Geographical and geophysical features are essential indicators of the hydrological response of catchments [3] and can be used for catchment classification [4,5,6] and the evaluation of their similarity. This is a complicated issue; the dominant factors in runoff generation are different in various parts of the world [7,8], and the identification of the weights or relative importance of various elements of runoff generation is often limited by convoluted effects of multiple variables [9]
Digital elevation models (DEMs), land use maps, soil maps, and various other information sources were used to analyze the properties of the study area that influence runoff
Summary
The formation of runoff consists of the interaction of basic processes: distribution (e.g., interception and infiltration), storage (e.g., in plants, lakes, and soil), and release of water from catchments (e.g., evapotranspiration or river flow) [2]. These processes are not often measured or cannot be observed directly with enough precision. This is a complicated issue; the dominant factors in runoff generation are different in various parts of the world [7,8], and the identification of the weights or relative importance of various elements of runoff generation is often limited by convoluted effects of multiple variables [9]
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