Aggregation in environmental systems &ndash; Part 2: Catchment mean transit times and young water fractions under hydrologic nonstationarity

Kirchner, J. W.

doi:10.5194/hess-20-299-2016

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-299-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-299-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

Research article

| Highlight paper

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19 Jan 2016

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 19 Jan 2016

Aggregation in environmental systems – Part 2: Catchment mean transit times and young water fractions under hydrologic nonstationarity

J. W. Kirchner

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Sep 2025	56	18	1	75
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Cumulative views and downloads (calculated since 18 Mar 2015)

Month	HTML	PDF	XML	Total
Mar 2015	109	96	1	206
Apr 2015	75	64	5	144
May 2015	40	23	0	63
Jun 2015	18	33	0	51
Jul 2015	17	29	0	46
Aug 2015	15	20	2	37
Sep 2015	9	13	0	22
Oct 2015	13	9	0	22
Nov 2015	18	12	1	31
Dec 2015	10	14	0	24
Jan 2016	187	76	1	264
Feb 2016	133	65	4	202
Mar 2016	83	57	16	156
Apr 2016	78	44	0	122
May 2016	43	15	0	58
Jun 2016	30	15	2	47
Jul 2016	25	16	1	42
Aug 2016	18	15	0	33
Sep 2016	20	12	3	35
Oct 2016	18	8	4	30
Nov 2016	14	4	7	25
Dec 2016	10	19	0	29
Jan 2017	27	16	3	46
Feb 2017	19	14	1	34
Mar 2017	42	37	3	82
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Mar 2025	40	13	0	53
Apr 2025	29	15	2	46
May 2025	34	7	2	43
Jun 2025	55	23	4	82
Jul 2025	46	17	2	65
Aug 2025	45	9	3	57
Sep 2025	56	18	1	75
Oct 2025	36	26	0	62
Nov 2025	41	29	3	73
Dec 2025	6	3	0	9

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Short summary

Here I show that seasonal tracer cycles yield strongly biased estimates of mean transit times in nonstationary catchments (and, by implication, in real-world catchments). However, they can be used to reliably estimate the fraction of "young" water in streamflow, meaning water that fell as precipitation less than roughly 2–3 months ago. This young water fraction varies systematically between high and low flows and may help in characterizing controls on stream chemistry.