MIKEE B.

LUCHAVEZ
ELEC 4 (02675) TIME: 5:30-6:30 PM

Runoff defined as the portion of rainfall, snowmelt, and/or irrigation water that
runs over the soil surface toward the stream rather than infiltrating into the soil. It is
sometimes called surface runoff.

A runoff model is a mathematical model describing the rainfall–runoff

relations of a rainfall catchment area, drainage basin or watershed. More precisely, it
produces a surface runoff hydrograph in response to a rainfall event, represented by
and input as a hyetograph. In other words, the model calculates the conversion of
rainfall into
runoff.

Watershed or drainage basin

Rainfall-runoff models need to be calibrated before they can be used.:

 Linear Reservoir - is a widely used conceptual model of

the rainfall–runoff process. The linear reservoir model
transforms rainfall excess to direct surface runoff and it
assimilates the catchment to a reservoir, for which the
conservation of mass applies. A well-known runoff
model is the linear reservoir, but in practice it has limited
applicability.

 Non-linear reservoir - A non-linear reservoir model is

used to analyze the rainfall-runoff relations in a small
valley (watershed, hydrological catchment).

 Recharge - called effective rainfall or rainfall excess,

can be modeled by a pre-reservoir giving the recharge as overflow.
 Nash model - uses a series
(cascade) of linear reservoirs in
which each reservoir empties into
the next until the runoff is
obtained.

 Software - were made with the RainOff

program, designed to analyses rainfall and
runoff using the non-linear reservoir model
with a pre-reservoir. The program also
contains an example of the hydrograph of
an agricultural subsurface drainage system
for which can be obtained from the
system's characteristics.

References:
Boyle, D. P. (2000), Multicriteria calibration of hydrological models, Ph.D.
dissertation, Dep. of Hydrol. and Water Resour., Univ. of Ariz., Tucson.
RainOff, a computer model for rainfall-runoff relations using the concept of a non-
linear reservoir.
J.W. de Zeeuw, 1973. Hydrograph analysis for areas with mainly groundwater runoff.
D.A. Kraijenhoff van de Leur, 1973. Rainfall-runoff relations and computational
models.
Software description for the Nash cascade hydrological model.
ayawardena, A. W. (2014). Environmental and Hydrological Systems Modelling