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.

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 groundwater-derived 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 rainfall-runoff 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 1-hour, 6-hour, or 24hour 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]

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).