NAME:

PAUL KAMAU NDUNGU

REG NO:

BSCE/013J/2011

UNIT:

WATER RESOURCE ENGINEERING.

ASSIGNMENT

1. A catchment response to a storm event will be influenced by a number of different variables,

including
The type of soil in an area
Rainfall runoff processes in tropical micro-catchments are driven by a combination of factors
like rainfall characteristics, soil physical conditions, slope gradients and vegetation types.
Nevertheless, soil physical properties like texture and drainage conditions of the subsoil as well
as slope gradients are key factors in runoff control under tropical rainfall with high storm event
intensities and rainfall accumulations. by impervious surfaces, but also by an increase in
catchment area contributing to the river flow
Land-use
The results show that the influence of land-use conditions on storm-runoff generation depends
greatly on the rainfall event characteristics and on the related spatial scale, i.e. the influence is
only relevant for convective storm events with high precipitation intensities in contrast to longlasting advective storm events with low precipitation intensities. However, convective events
and thus land-use conditionsare of very minor relevance for the formation of floods in large
river basins because this type of rainfall event is usually restricted to small-scale occurrence..
Urbanization also plays a role as there is more construction of buildings which makes it to have
less infiltration as there is tarmack roads and infrastructure which enhances the use of drainage
systems to drain the water since there is less infiltration.
In conclusion, responses of headwater streams to individual storms are unpredictable but
increased peak flows occur associated with human development, mitigated by surficial geology.
The headwater streams that are most vulnerable to alterations in flow occur on poorly drained
soils, and where urbanization tends to concentrate. Much greater attention to managing water is
required if further degradation of stream ecosystems is to be prevented from our future land use.

Underlying geology
There is potentially significant hydrologic influence of underlying bedrock in rainfallrunoff
delivery at the hillslope scale. It is also evident that stormflow followed fracture pathways within
the shallow weathered bedrock and interacted with the overlying colluvium when flows is forced
upwards by more competent bedrock, creating zones of transient saturation. Water exfiltrating
from the bedrock during storm events and sprinkling experiments produced perched transient
water tables at the soilbedrock interface that influenced directly, subsurface storm- flow and
slope instability. Additionally, their bromide tracer injections showed rapid movement of bedrock
flow to the catchment outlet identifying the importance of bedrock flow paths for hillslope-tocatchment integration
In other research it showed the importance of bedrock groundwater in a granitic catchment in
Central Japan. They found that transient saturation at the soil bedrock interface was connected to
the rise and fall of deeper bedrock groundwater that ultimately influenced the chemical, spatial
and temporal characteristics of subsurface water movement into the stream channel.
In some bedrock aquifers, fracture flow is the key feature controlling bedrock groundwater
contributions to hillslope flow and catchment runoff response. Fracture flow through bedrock is
controlled by fracture network density, geometry and connectivity (Banks et al., 2009) and can
be extremely complex and heterogeneous. Fracture zones separated by competent bedrock may
create compartmentalized aquifers, while faulting, weathering and other large scale geologic
processes may help induce connectivity between fracture pathways
Antecedent moisture conditions
Soil water content in the upper soil layer prior to a rain event can be an important factor affecting
the relationship between rainfall and runoff. Their results showed that the surface runoff was
strongly controlled by soil moisture, with a threshold value of the volumetric water content
varying from 41 to 46 %, below which no runoff occurred.. In hot semi-arid and arid
environments soils are often much drier in general, and the role of antecedent soil moisture can
be less important. . Runoff from less intense storms on soils of higher permeability is controlled
by the soil water content of the surface soil layers and is more dependent on initial conditions.
Soil water content monitoring at the watershed scale is difficult because of its space-time
variability and because field measurements are costly and time consuming (Brocca et al., 2008).
Because there are very few studies that have looked at the effects of antecedent soil moisture on
runoff modeling sensitivities in arid/semi-arid areas,The questions blow has to be addressed
mostly: (1) to examine the sensitivity of the measured runoff to rainfall ratio to measured
antecedent soil water content, (2) to analyze the sensitivity of runoff depth and peak model
output to soil moisture input, and (3) to test the prediction capability of runoff at a small
watershed scale using measured storm-antecedent soil moisture vs. long-term average antecedent
soil water content for model initial conditions