《Hydrology and》.pdfVIP

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 10, 101– 112, 2006 Hydrology and /EGU/hess/hess/10/101/ SRef-ID: 1607-7938/hess/2006-10-101 Earth System European Geosciences Union Sciences On the calculation of the topographic wetness index: evaluation of different methods based on field observations 1 2 3 R. Sørensen , U. Zinko , and J. Seibert 1Department of Environmental Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, P.O. Box 7050, S-75007 Uppsala, Sweden 2 ˚ ˚ Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umea University, Uminova Science Park, S-90187 Umea, Sweden 3Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, S-10691 Stockholm, Sweden Received: 14 July 2005 – Published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions: 31 August 2005 Revised: 9 September 2005 – Accepted: 12 January 2006 – Published: 15 February 2006 Abstract. The topographic wetness index (TWI, ln(a/tanβ)), The spatial distribution of groundwater levels influences soil which combines local upslope contributing area and slope, is processes and will in turn affect the properties of the soil commonly used to quantify topographic control on hydro- (e.g. Zinko et al., 2005; Sariyildiz et al., 2005; Band et al., logical processes. Methods of computing this index differ 1993; Florinsky et al., 2004; Whelan and Gandolfi, 2002). primarily in the way the upslope contributing area is cal- The topographic wetness index (TWI) was developed by culat