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Rainfall-Runoff Model: Elevation Distribution

The geometry or orography of a catchment is defined by a number of parameters, including
  1. the total area
  2. length (longest extent along the main direction of the river)
  3. minimum and maximum elevation.
The model uses the elevation distribution to adjust temperature (with an adiabatic lapse rate) and precipitation (assumed to vary, as a rule increase, with elevation).

To specify the absolute (and relative) shares of the area in each 100m elevation band, an special editor with a simple graphical feed back is provided.

The number of layers (25) and their vertical extent (100) are fixed. The elevation range (minimum and maximum elevation) and basin size/area independently specified at the Basin Parameter editor level are only used for consistency checking.

Please note: the area specified for each elevation layer is supposed to add up to the total basin area specified; this is used as a test for consistency, even though the model internally corrects for any mismatch to make sure that we base all estimates on 100% of the basin area !


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