Geomorphologic Skewness of Hydrologic Response

This paper investigates positively skewed shape of instantaneous unit hydrograph (IUH), one of the universal features of hydrologic response function. An analytical expression of statistical moments for IUH is derived in the framework of width function based geomorphologic IUH (GIUH) theory being interpreted by the concept of hydrodynamic, geomorphologic and kinematic dispersion. Within the extent of a river basin there is a significant scale difference between hillslope and channel flow path length. Even though the former has much smaller length scale its variation coefficient tends to be higher and skewness coefficient has a different trend than the latter. Kinematic heterogeneity has larger influence on the shape of IUH rather than hydrodynamic heterogeneity. Furthermore, its combined effect with geomorphologic heterogeneity can be a major cause of skewing hydrologic response function. Through transformation of width function into GIUH statistical properties of hillslope and channel flow path length can be imprinted on the shape of hydrologic response function in the form of dimensionless statistics.