Identification and regionalization of dominant runoff processes – a GIS-based and a statistical approach

Abstract. In this study two approaches are presented to identify Dominant Runoff Processes (DRP) with respect to regionalization. The approaches are a simplification of an existing method to determine DRP by means of an extensive field campaign. The first approach combines the permeability of the substratum, land-use and slope of the basin in a GIS-based analysis. The second approach makes use of discriminant analysis of the physiographic characteristics of the basin and links it to the GIS analysis. The results of the developed approaches are maps, which identify dominant runoff processes and represent a spatial distribution of the hydrological behaviour of the soil during prolonged rainfall events. The approaches have been developed in a micro-scale basin (Germany). An additional meso-scale basin was introduced in which the two approaches were applied for quality control. The thus generated maps for the micro-scale basin were compared with an existing DRP map, which was derived with the existing method. The first approach showed a resemblance of 79% when compared to this map, whereas the second approach showed only a resemblance of 51%. The generated maps for the meso-scale basin were compared to DRP that were determined point wise according to the existing method. The first approach showed in this case a resemblance of 81%, whereas the second approach showed a resemblance of 68%. Therefore, the first approach is preferred to the second approach when accuracy, data input and calculation time are concerned.