TY - JOUR
T1 - Regional Patterns and Physical Controls of Streamflow Generation Across the Conterminous United States
AU - Wu, Shuyue
AU - Zhao, Jianshi
AU - Wang, Hao
AU - Sivapalan, Murugesu
N1 - The authors are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and especially to the Associate Editor (K. McGuire) for their critical and insightful comments and encouragement that contributed to significant improvements of the manuscript. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers 92047302, 91747208, and 51861125102); and the State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering‐Tsinghua (Grant number 2019‐KY‐01). Shuyue Wu is grateful for the financial support provided by the China Scholarship Council (Grant no. 201806210130), which enabled her to spend 12 months at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign (UIUC) as a visiting scholar. She thanks UIUC Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science for their generosity in providing facilities to undertake this research.
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - This study unveils regional patterns of dominant streamflow generation mechanisms across the conterminous United States and identifies their climatic and physiographic controls. Six signatures describing the characteristics of rainfall-stormflow responses and the characteristics of base flow response are extracted from continuous rainfall-streamflow time series for 432 US catchments. These study catchments are classified into eight classes based on similarities of the six signatures, and dominant streamflow generation mechanisms for each class are inferred based on the magnitudes of the six signatures. This catchment classification reveals geographically coherent regional patterns across the conterminous United States. Catchment climatic and physiographic characteristics most relevant to this catchment classification are identified using techniques such as correlation analysis and random forest modeling. The most relevant characteristics are climate aridity, median event rainfall volume, topographic slope, soil permeability, rock type, and vegetation density, which are found to be the main controlling factors governing the dominant streamflow generation mechanisms. The linkages between the inferred dominant streamflow generation mechanisms and specific combinations of the climatic and catchment physiographic characteristics identified above are synthesized in a conceptual diagram, as an extension of the classical Dunne diagram. The new findings, while largely consistent with the results of previous empirical and modeling studies, add rich process detail to the transferable understanding of regional patterns of dominant streamflow generation mechanisms and their climatic and physiographic controls.
AB - This study unveils regional patterns of dominant streamflow generation mechanisms across the conterminous United States and identifies their climatic and physiographic controls. Six signatures describing the characteristics of rainfall-stormflow responses and the characteristics of base flow response are extracted from continuous rainfall-streamflow time series for 432 US catchments. These study catchments are classified into eight classes based on similarities of the six signatures, and dominant streamflow generation mechanisms for each class are inferred based on the magnitudes of the six signatures. This catchment classification reveals geographically coherent regional patterns across the conterminous United States. Catchment climatic and physiographic characteristics most relevant to this catchment classification are identified using techniques such as correlation analysis and random forest modeling. The most relevant characteristics are climate aridity, median event rainfall volume, topographic slope, soil permeability, rock type, and vegetation density, which are found to be the main controlling factors governing the dominant streamflow generation mechanisms. The linkages between the inferred dominant streamflow generation mechanisms and specific combinations of the climatic and catchment physiographic characteristics identified above are synthesized in a conceptual diagram, as an extension of the classical Dunne diagram. The new findings, while largely consistent with the results of previous empirical and modeling studies, add rich process detail to the transferable understanding of regional patterns of dominant streamflow generation mechanisms and their climatic and physiographic controls.
KW - Dunne diagram
KW - catchment classification
KW - climatic and physiographic controls
KW - dominant streamflow generation mechanisms
KW - spatial patterns
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U2 - 10.1029/2020WR028086
DO - 10.1029/2020WR028086
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85108632756
SN - 0043-1397
VL - 57
JO - Water Resources Research
JF - Water Resources Research
IS - 6
M1 - e2020WR028086
ER -