Catchment relief characteristics for hydrological purposes

Abstract

Description of a catchment's response to precipitation input is vital for short–term forecasting, long–term water balance simulations and estimation of design floods. In ungauged catchments, where data are not available for calibrating a model or estimating flood frequency parametres, hydrological characteristics must be estimated from variables available from maps or other sources. An extensively mapped, easily obtainable and hydrologically relevant property of a basin is its topography, increasingly available as digital elevation models (DEMs).