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Hydrological Properties (hydrological + property)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Engineering	80%

Selected Abstracts

Interpretation of Spring Recession Curves

GROUND WATER, Issue 5 2002
H. Amit
Recession curves contain information on storage properties and different types of media such as porous, fractured, cracked lithologies and karst. Recession curve analysis provides a function that quantitatively describes the temporal discharge decay and expresses the drained volume between specific time limits (Hall 1968). This analysis also allows estimating the hydrological significance of the discharge function parameters and the hydrological properties of the aquifer. In this study, we analyze data from perennial springs in the Judean Mountains and from others in the Galilee Mountains, northern Israel. All the springs drain perched carbonate aquifers. Eight of the studied springs discharge from a karst dolomite sequence, whereas one flows out from a fractured, slumped block of chalk. We show that all the recession curves can be well fitted by a function that consists of two exponential terms with exponential coefficients ,1 and ,2. These coefficients are approximately constant for each spring, reflecting the hydraulic conductivity of different media through which the ground water flows to the spring. The highest coefficient represents the fast flow, probably through cracks, or quickflow, whereas the lower one reflects the slow flow through the porous medium, or baseflow. The comparison of recession curves from different springs and different years leads to the conclusion that the main factors that affect the recession curve exponential coefficients are the aquifer lithology and the geometry of the water conduits therein. In normal years of rainy winter and dry summer, ,1 is constant in time. However, when the dry period is longer than usual because of a dry winter, ,1 slightly decreases with time. [source]

Boundary and border considerations in hydrology

HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, Issue 7 2004
Ming-ko Woo
Abstract This paper examines several issues related to hydrological boundaries and their border zones. In a two-dimensional space, a boundary is a line that separates two domains possessing different hydrological properties or dominated by different hydrological processes, and a border is an area that experiences an edge effect owing to transitions or mixing of processes. Hydrological boundaries may be static, such as drainage divides, or dynamic, such as the edges of a seasonal snow cover. They may be open or closed to the transfer of matter and energy, although most boundaries tend to be perforated, permitting different rates of movement across different segments. Borders may be narrow or the edge effect can affect large areas, as happens to the sensible heat flux over a highly fragmented melting snowfield. The introduction of artificial boundaries, notably the grid patterns of remote sensing pixels, digital elevation models and land surface schemes, gives rise to problems of mismatch with the natural hydrological boundaries. Incorrect demarcation, omission and generalization of boundaries can produce errors that are hard to rectify. Serious biases are involved when point observations are used to calibrate parameters or to validate model outputs integrated over a bounded area. Examples are drawn mainly from cold climate hydrology to illustrate the boundary issues but the questions transcend disciplinary areas. The intent of this presentation is to stimulate discussions that could be a prelude to finding solutions to many boundary problems which have thus far eluded hydrological investigations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

A decision scheme to indicate dominant hydrological flow processes on temperate grassland

HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, Issue 2 2003
Simon Scherrer
Abstract A decision scheme has been developed to indicate the likely dominant runoff forming on temperate grassland hill slopes. The decision scheme was developed from data collected from sprinkler experiments on 60 m2 plots at a number of grassland sites in Switzerland. The scheme requires input of hydrological properties of the surface and each major horizon of the soil. Worked examples of the application of the decision scheme to determine the dominant hydrological processes and runoff types are given for three actual grassland hill slopes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

On morphometric properties of basins, scale effects and hydrological response

HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, Issue 1 2003
Roger Moussa
Abstract One of the important problems in hydrology is the quantitative description of river system structure and the identification of relationships between geomorphological properties and hydrological response. Digital elevation models (DEMs) generally are used to delineate the basin's limits and to extract the channel network considering pixels draining an area greater than a threshold area S. In this paper, new catchment shape descriptors, the geometric characteristics of an equivalent ellipse that has the same centre of gravity, the same principal inertia axes, the same area and the same ratio of minimal inertia moment to maximal inertia moment as the basin, are proposed. They are applied in order to compare and classify the structure of seven basins located in southern France. These descriptors were correlated to hydrological properties of the basins' responses such as the lag time and the maximum amplitude of a geomorphological unit hydrograph calculated at the basin outlet by routing an impulse function through the channel network using the diffusive wave model. Then, we analysed the effects of the threshold area S on the topological structure of the channel network and on the evolution of the source catchment's shape. Simple models based on empirical relationships between the threshold S and the morphometric properties were established and new catchment shape indexes, independent of the observation scale S, were defined. This methodology is useful for geomorphologists dealing with the shape of source basins and for hydrologists dealing with the problem of scale effects on basin topology and on relationships between the basin morphometric properties and the hydrological response. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

JET-SUSPENDED, CALCITE-BALLASTED CYANOBACTERIAL WATERWARTS IN A DESERT SPRING1

JOURNAL OF PHYCOLOGY, Issue 3 2002
Ferran Garcia-Pichel
We describe a population of colonial cyanobacteria (waterwarts) that develops as the dominant primary producer in a bottom-fed, O2 -poor, warm spring in the Cuatro Ciénegas karstic region of the Mexican Chihuahuan Desert. The centimeter-sized waterwarts were suspended within a central, conically shaped, 6-m deep well by upwelling waters. Waterwarts were built by an Aphanothece -like unicellular cyanobacterium and supported a community of epiphytic filamentous cyanobacteria and diatoms but were free of heterotrophic bacteria inside. Sequence analysis of 16S rRNA genes revealed that this cyanobacterium is only distantly related to several strains of other unicellular cyanobacteria (Merismopedia, Cyanothece, Microcystis). Waterwarts contained orderly arrangements of mineral crystallites, made up of microcrystalline low-magnesium calcite with high levels of strontium and sulfur. Waterwarts were 95.9% (v/v) glycan, 2.8% cells, and 1.3% mineral grains and had a buoyant density of 1.034 kg·L,1. An analysis of the hydrological properties of the spring well and the waterwarts demonstrated that both large colony size and the presence of controlled amounts of mineral ballast are required to prevent the population from being washed out of the well. The unique hydrological characteristics of the spring have likely selected for both traits. The mechanisms by which controlled nucleation of extracellular calcite is achieved remain to be explored. [source]