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Rainfall is a spatiotemporally variated process and one of the key elements to accurately capture both catchment runoff response and floodplain extents. Flash floods are the result of intense rainfall, typically associated to highly variable rain in both space and time, such as convective storms. In this work, the extent within-storm variability affects runoff and flooding is explored. The Kan catchment (Tehran, Iran) is used as base topography for the simulations. The allochthonous nature of floods in the catchment and how they interact with the effects of storm variability are further investigated. For this, 300 synthetic rainfall signals with different hyetograph variabilities are generated and imposed on a 1D/2D hydrodynamic model. Additionally, a set of simulations with different levels of spatial variability are performed. The results suggest that temporal and spatial variability affect the runoff response in different degrees. Peak discharge and hydrograph shapes, as well as flooded areas, are affected. The effect of storm temporal variability is shown to be significantly higher than storm spatial variability and storm properties such as return period, duration, and volume. Further on the influence of storm spatiotemporal variability on stream discharge and flood response is seen to be strongly dependent on the location within the drainage network at which it is assessed.
Rainfall is a spatiotemporally varied process and key to accurately capturing catchment runoff and determining flood response. Flash flood response of a catchment can be strongly governed by a rainfall’s spatiotemporal variability and is influenced by storm movement which drives a continuous spatiotemporal change throughout a rainfall event. In this work, the sensitivity of runoff and flooded areas to rainfall movement are assessed in the Kan catchment (Iran). The allochthonous nature of floods in the catchment and how they interact with the effects of rainfall movement are investigated. Fifty synthetic rain hyetographs are generated and traversed over the catchment under different velocities and directions and used to force a 1D/2D hydrodynamic model. The results suggest rainfall movement affects the runoff response in different degrees. Peak discharge, hydrograph shapes and flooded areas are affected. Storms with higher velocities result in higher peaks and faster onsets of runoff and consequently higher flooded areas in comparison to slower storms. The direction of the movement also plays a role. Storms moving along the average direction of the stream result in higher peaks and flooded areas. The relevance of storm direction is greater for slow moving storms. Additionally, the influence of rainfall movement is modulated by hyetograph structure, and the allochthonous behavior is greatly dependent on the location within the drainage network at which it is assessed.
Microtopography (MT) can govern runoff dynamics as a net result of local heterogeneities in the flow paths and ponding. This in turn controls the development of the surface water layer that connects and flows downslope. It is therefore important to understand which microtopographic features affect runoff generation dynamics and its macroscopic—hillslope scale—hydrological signatures (e.g., hydrographs, runoff and infiltration volumes). In this study, we numerically solve 2D overland flow from a single rain pulse on 1,460 idealized hillslopes with different slopes and sinusoidal microtopographies and different infiltration capacities. We assess hydrodynamic distributions, hydrographs and hydrological indices to assess the effects of MT and infiltration on the (local) hydrodynamic and (larger scale) hydrologic responses in terms of surface runoff regimes. The results show that MT enhances infiltration and that infiltration and runoff depend in a strong non-linear way on slope and the properties of MT. Three regimes of influence of MT were identified: one in which MT plays a negligible role but there is a high sensitivity to the infiltration capacity curve, a second regime in which hydrological partitioning is highly sensitive to MT and the infiltration capacity curve, and a third regime in which MT increases infiltration, but the response is insensitive to particular features, and more affected by the average slopes. The regimes are the product of the interplay between small (MT) and large scale (slope) properties. Furthermore, the results suggest that hydrological signatures can be interpreted and explained by the spatiotemporal variation of surface connectivity.