Performance evaluation of an automated method for hydrograph separation in Mellah catchment, Northeastern Algeria

Abstract

This paper explains a procedure based on the master recession curve (MRC) for hydrograph separation into individual flow components, using the recession constant K. To evaluate the performance of this computational technique, the results of the baseflow component were compared to the baseflow component obtained from the recursive digital filter (RDF) method. The study has revealed that the results of baseflow achieved by both methods show similarity to a great extent, and the baseflow values agree better with (R2 > 0.77). Moreover, automated baseflow separation underestimates the simulated baseflow from RDF method by as much as 2.35%, or overestimates it by up to 23.55%, during rainfall. These methods were applied to a set of hydrometric measures in the Mellah catchment, Algeria. The results proved that the proposed method gives a better estimate of flow components.