Influence of pre-event water on streamflow in a granitic watershed using hydrograph separation

Hyerin Kim, Sung Hyun Cho, Dongguen Lee, Youn Young Jung, Young Hee Kim, Dong Chan Koh, Jeonghoon Lee

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

For water resources management, many studies for investigating flow paths from rainfall to subsurface have been conducted for last half century. A hydrograph separation based on end member mixing was carried out to evaluate the importance of the hydrological pathways providing the main sources of a small granitic watershed, Dorim-cheon, Seoul. An analysis of chloride, oxygen-18 and deuterium isotopes from precipitation and stream water during three storms was conducted with high-resolution data using 129 samples. Stream water, collected in advance of rain event, was assumed as a pre-event water (baseflow) component according to its dry condition and isotopic values compared with the values of different time periods. The contribution from vadose water was ignored due to the thin soil layer covering the study area. Using a two-component mixing model, hydrograph separation of the stream water in Dorim-cheon was conducted based on weighted mean values of rain water and pre-event water component with the high-resolution datasets. As a result of the analysis with water isotopes, contribution of groundwater was dominant during the entire study period (73–74%) except of instant dominance of rainfall at the earliest period. Using chloride as a tracer for hydrograph separation, a significant difference for the amount of pre-event water contribution was identified. This might be caused by the large variation of chloride concentration during the rain event and the end member determination.

Original languageEnglish
Article number82
JournalEnvironmental Earth Sciences
Volume76
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2017

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Keywords

  • Baseflow contribution
  • Granite region
  • Hydrograph separation
  • Mixing model
  • Tracer
  • Water isotope

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