A hydrograph is a graph showing the rate of flow (discharge) versus time past a specific point in

a river, or other channel or conduit carrying flow. The rate of flow is typically expressed in cubic
meters or cubic feet per second (cms or cfs).
It can also refer to a graph showing the volume of water reaching a particular outfall, or location
in a sewerage network. Graphs are commonly used in the design of sewerage, more specifically,
the design of surface water sewerage systems and combined sewers.

Stream hydrograph. Increases in stream flow follow rainfall or snowmelt. The gradual decay in flow after
the peaks reflects diminishing supply from groundwater.

Raster hydrograph. The entire flow record and patterns representing different timescales can be visualized.

Contents
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1Terminology

2Baseflow separation

3Unit hydrograph

4Subsurface hydrology hydrograph

5Raster hydrograph
o

5.1References
6See also

7External links

Terminology[edit]
The discharge is measured at a specific point in a river and is typically time variant.

Rising limb: The rising limb of hydro graph, also known as concentration curve, reflects
a prolonged increase in discharge from a catchment area, typically in response to a rainfall
event

Recession (or falling) limb: The recession limb extends from the peak flow rate
onward. The end of stormflow (aka quickflow or direct runoff) and the return to groundwaterderived flow (base flow) is often taken as the point of inflection of the recession limb. The
recession limb represents the withdrawal of water from the storage built up in the basin
during the earlier phases of the hydrograph.

Peak discharge: the highest point on the hydro graph when the rate of discharge is
greatest

Lag time: the time interval from the center of mass of rainfall excess to the peak of the
resulting hydrograph

Time to peak: time interval from the start of the resulting hydro graph

Discharge: the rate of flow (volume per unit time) passing a specific location in a river or
other channel

Types of hydrograph can include:

Storm hydrographs

Flood hydrographs

Annual hydrographs aka regimes

Direct Runoff Hydrograph

Effective Runoff Hydrograph

Raster Hydrograph

Storage opportunities in the drainage network (e.g., lakes, reservoirs, wetlands, channel
and bank storage capacity)

Baseflow separation[edit]
A stream hydrograph is commonly conceptualized to include a baseflow component' and
a runoff component. The former represents the relatively steady contribution to stream
discharge from groundwater return flow, while the latter represents the additional streamflow
contributed by subsurface flow and surface flow/runoff]].
The separation of baseflow from direct runoff in a hydrograph is often of interest to hydrologists,
planners, and engineers, as it aids in determining the influence of different hydrologic processes
on discharge from the subject catchment. Because the timing, magnitude, and duration of
groundwater return flow differs so greatly from that of direct runoff, separating and understanding
the influence of these distinct processes is key to analyzing and simulating the likely hydrologic
effects of various land use, water use, weather, and climate conditions and changes.
However, the process of separating baseflow from direct runoff is an inexact science. In part
this is because these two concepts are not, themselves, entirely distinct and unrelated. Return
flow from groundwater increases along with overland flow from saturated or impermeable areas
during and after a storm event; moreover, a particular water molecule can easily move through
both pathways en route to the watershed outlet. Therefore, separation of a purely baseflow
component in a hydrograph is a somewhat arbitrary exercise. Nevertheless, various graphical
and empirical techniques have been developed to perform these hydrograph separations. The
separation of base flow from direct runoff can be an important first step in developing rainfallrunoff models for a watershed of interestfor example, in developing and applying unit
hydrographs as described below.

Unit hydrograph[edit]

A unit hydrograph (UH) is the hypothetical unit response of a watershed (in terms of runoff
volume and timing) to a unit input of rainfall. It can be defined as the direct runoff
hydrograph (DRH) resulting from one unit (e.g., one cm or one inch) of effective rainfall occurring
uniformly over that watershed at a uniform rate over a unit period of time. As a UH is applicable
only to the direct runoff component of a hydrograph (i.e., surface runoff), a separate
determination of the baseflow component is required.

A UH is specific to a particular watershed, and specific to a particular length of time

corresponding to the duration of the effective rainfall. That is, the UH is specified as being the 1hour, 6-hour, or 24-hour UH, or any other length of time up to the time of concentration of direct
runoff at the watershed outlet. Thus, for a given watershed, there can be many unit hydrographs,
each one corresponding to a different duration of effective rainfall.
The UH technique provides a practical and relatively easy-to-apply tool for quantifying the effect
of a unit of rainfall on the corresponding runoff from a particular drainage basin. UH theory
assumes that a watershed's runoff response is linear and time-invariant, and that the effective
rainfall occurs uniformly over the watershed. In the real world, none of these assumptions are
strictly true. Nevertheless, application of UH methods typically yields a reasonable approximation
of the flood response of natural watersheds. The linear assumptions underlying UH theory allows
for the variation in storm intensity over time (i.e., the storm hyetograph) to be simulated by
applying the principles of superposition and proportionality to separate storm components to
determine the resulting cumulative hydrograph. This allows for a relatively straightforward
calculation of the hydrograph response to any arbitrary rain event.
An instantaneous unit hydrograph is a further refinement of the concept; for an IUH, the input
rainfall is assumed to all take place at a discrete point in time (obviously, this isn't the case for
actual rainstorms). Making this assumption can greatly simplify the analysis involved in
constructing a unit hydrograph, and it is necessary for the creation of ageomorphologic
instantaneous unit hydrograph.
The creation of a GIUH is possible given nothing more than topologic data for a particular
drainage basin. In fact, only the number of streams of a given order, the mean length of streams
of a given order, and the mean land area draining directly to streams of a given order are
absolutely required (and can be estimated rather than explicitly calculated if necessary). It is
therefore possible to calculate a GIUH for a basin without any data about stream height or flow,
which may not always be available.

Subsurface hydrology hydrograph[edit]

In subsurface hydrology (hydrogeology), a hydrograph is a record of the water level (the
observed hydraulic head in wells screened across an aquifer).
Typically, a hydrograph is recorded for monitoring of heads in aquifers during non-test conditions
(e.g., to observe the seasonal fluctuations in an aquifer). When an aquifer test is being
performed, the resulting observations are typically called drawdown, since they are subtracted
from pre-test levels and often only the change in water level is dealt with.

Raster hydrograph[edit]
Raster hydrographs are pixel-based plots for visualizing and identifying variations and changes
in large multidimensional data sets. Originally developed by Keim (2000) they were first applied

in hydrology by Koehler (2004) as a means of highlighting inter-annual and intra-annual changes

in streamflow. The raster hydrographs in WaterWatch, like those developed by Koehler, depict
years on the y-axis and days along the x-axis. Users can choose to plot streamflow (actual
values or log values), streamflow percentile, or streamflow class (from 1, for low flow, to 7 for
high flow), for Daily, 7-Day, 14-Day, and 28-Day streamflow. For a more comprehensive
description of raster hydrographs, see Strandhagen et al. (2006).