Catchment biophysical drivers of streamflow characteristics

Abstract:

The characteristics of streamflow reflect the co-evolution of climate, soils, topography and vegetation of catchments. Hydrological metrics or signatures can represent the long-term behaviour and integrate the influence of all the streamflow drivers. Although this sort of relationship has been developed in regional studies exploring prediction of Flow Duration Curves and other streamflow metrics, little is known about the controls of other key streamflow characteristics especially in continent scale. This study aims to understand how catchment biophysical variables control key hydrological metrics such as baseflow index, elasticity of streamflow to rainfall variability and intermittency in continent scale and regionally. We used a set of catchment biophysical variables to model key streamflow signatures using multivariate power-law and beta regressions in 355 catchments located along the eastern Australian seaboard. Streamflow signatures were derived from daily streamflow time series data from 1980 to 2013. We tested 52 catchment biophysical characteristics related to climate, soil, topography, geography, geomorphology, vegetation and land-cover as predictors of the streamflow signatures. The prediction R-squared ranged from 63 to 72% when relationships are built in continent scale, but can be greater than 80% when regressions are regionalised. The interpretation of the modelled relationships offers new insights regarding the controls of flow characteristics.