Simulation of summer storms of differing recurrence intervals in a semiarid environment using a kinematic routing scheme

Abstract

A kinematic flood routing procedure has been devised for a small dendritic headwater gully network on the Western slope of Colorado. the program is spatially-distributed, incorporating lateral inflows from 103 field sites on the network for which channel geometry variables are known. This model, in which a lateral inflow algorithm for the sideslopes between each channel site is convoluted into a Freeze-type (1978) numerical scheme, is fully developed in this paper.

Although the field basis of the lateral inflow algorithm has been tested elsewhere (Faulkner, 1990), sensitivity tests were needed for the roughness and hillslope velocity estimates used in the routing procedure. After these successful tests, a suitably precalibrated run of the model was compared with a field-monitored runoff event on the watershed, and results again were encouraging. However, peak attentuation downstream was more pronounced in reality than on the simulation, so the model was also modified by inclusion of allowances for transmission loss. the tendency that the model had displayed for peak size attenuation downstream was considerably enhanced.

Using the model, the geomorphic role of the flashfloods which affect the watershed in the summer months is briefly considered by applying the model to existing records of local summer storm rainfall events as a basis for event simulation. These simulations show that downstream attenuation of the flood wave on concave networks in steep semiarid terrain was likely to be a common occurrence, possibly resulting in down-net deposition and differences in geomorphic behaviour between upstream and downstream sites. the discussion is finally broadened to consider the relative importance of ‘common’ as compared to ‘freak’ watershed events in maintaining these differences.