Abstract
Abstract. Inspired by a quotation from Howard Cook in 1946, this paper traces the evolution of the infiltration theory of runoff from the work of Robert Horton and LeRoy Sherman in the 1930s to the early digital computer models of the 1970s and 1980s. The reasons for the popularity of the infiltration theory are considered and its impact on the way in which hydrological responses were perceived by several generations of hydrologists. Reconsideration of the perceptual model for many catchments, partly as a result of the greater appreciation of the contribution of subsurface flows to the hydrograph indicated by tracer studies, suggests a more precise utilisation of hydrological terms and, in particular, that the use of runoff and surface runoff should be avoided.
Highlights
The background to the era of infiltrationCook has stimulated this paper, which has the aim of trying to understand why the infiltration theory of runoff came to have such an impact on hydrological understanding and analysis from the 1930s onwards, in the work of American hydrologists such as Robert Elmer Horton, LeRoy Kempton Sherman, Waldo Smith, Cook himself, and many others
We will take the start of the era of infiltration as being the 1933 paper “On the role of infiltration in the hydrological cycle” in the Transactions of the American Geophysical Union by Robert Horton
This committee had a number of subcommittees, including on infiltration and the physics of soil moisture and of the infiltration process, infiltration in relation to ground water, infiltration in relation to snow and its physical properties, infiltration in relation to surface runoff, infiltration in relation to irrigation, and infiltration in relation to evapotranspiration and the consumptive use of water
Summary
Cook has stimulated this paper, which has the aim of trying to understand why the infiltration theory of runoff came to have such an impact on hydrological understanding and analysis from the 1930s onwards, in the work of American hydrologists such as Robert Elmer Horton, LeRoy Kempton Sherman, Waldo Smith, Cook himself, and many others. The soil acts as a separating surface, and the author believes that various hydrologic problems are simplified by starting at this surface and pursuing the subsequent course of each part of the rainfall as so divided, separately. This has not hitherto, in general, been undertaken. Cook had been one of the principal assistants of Robert Horton at the Horton Hydrological Laboratory in Voorheesville, New York
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