Hydrological processes of storm runoff from catchments of different land uses

Abstract

In this paper, a novel and efficient study on the hydrological processes of storm runoff from catchments of different land uses is conducted. The motivation is to precisely simulate the hydrological processes of storm runoff in the agricultural catchments with different patterns of land uses, i.e., forest, paddy, and upland, respectively. As it is discussed in this paper, different land use leads to different characteristics of storm runoff. In order to understand the changes in the hydrological processes of storm runoff from catchments of different land uses, the effects of rainfall intensity, initial soil moisture deficit, evapotranspiration rate, percolation rate, and retention capacity on hydrological processes of the catchments are taken into consideration. According to the principle of water balance, a general model to connect the separate hydrological processes is developed; then, the individual hydrological process is studied in detail: Firstly, the daily evaporation is calculated according to the relation between the actual evapotranspiration and the potential evapotranspiration rate; Secondly, the retention of storm runoff is plotted against the total rainfall, and the maximum storage is calculated; Thirdly, the percolation rate is calculated for each catchment.