analyzing runoff strongprocessesstrong through conceptual hydrological.pdfVIP

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 18, 5149–5167, 2014 /18/5149/2014/ doi:10.5194/hess-18-5149-2014 © Author(s) 2014. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Analyzing runoff processes through conceptual hydrological modeling in the Upper Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia 1,2 2 5 3,4 6 3 6 4 M. Dessie , N. E. C. Verhoest , V. R. N. Pauwels , T. Admasu , J. Poesen , E. Adgo , J. Deckers , and J. Nyssen 1School of Civil Water Resources Engineering, Bahir Dar University, P.O. Box 430, Ethiopia 2Laboratory of Hydrology and Water Management, Ghent University, Coupure links 653, 9000 Gent, Belgium 3College of Agriculture Environmental Sciences, Bahir Dar University, P.O. Box 79, Ethiopia 4Department of Geography, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281 (S8), 9000 Gent, Belgium 5Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia 6Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium Correspondence to: M. Dessie (meketedessie.wossenie@ugent.be) Received: 19 April 2014 – Published in Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss.: 20 May 2014 Revised: 14 October 2014 – Accepted: 11 November 2014 – Published: 12 December 2014 Abstract. Understanding runoff processes in a basin is of runoff as saturated excess flow prevails from the flat slope paramount importance for the effective planning and man- areas. Overall, the model study suggests that identifying the agement of water resources, in particular in data-scarce re- catchments into different runoff production areas based on gions such as the Upper Blue Nile. Hydrological models rep- topography and including the impermeable rocky areas sep- resenting the underlying hydrological processes can predict arately in the modeling process mimics the rainfall–runoff river discharges from ungau