• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.37 no.12
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• pp.1065-1074
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• 2004

This study aims at the introduction of new catchment shape descriptor, developed by Moussa(2003), based on equivalent ellipse and the assessment of its hydrologic applicability. Two descriptors a+b and a+b+${\varepsilon}OM$were correlated to the lag time and those were applied to the estimation of representative values of Nash model parameters. They are applied in order to examine the practicality to 3 catchments in Korea, catchments in Korea, respectively, i.e. Pyeongchanggang catchment in Han river, Bocheongcheon catchment in Geum river and Wicheon catchment in Nakdong river. As a result both of two descriptors show higher correlations to the lag lime than classical geomorphologic factors and hereby Moussa's suggestion(2003) is confirmed. For the sake of simplicity the former is recommended. Also representative IUHs derived from this study show consistent basin response characteristics. It is desirable to conduct further more case studies on many other basins.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2005.05b
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• pp.199-203
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• 2005

One of the most important hydrological response characteristics is the lag time. It is well known as being under the influence of the morphometric properties of the basin, which could be expressed by catchment shape descriptors. In this paper, the geometric characteristics of an equivalent ellipse proposed by Moussa(2003) is applied for the lag time analysis. The lag time is obtained from the rainfall-runoff observed data by the method of moments suggested by Nash(1960) and the relationships between the basin morphometric properties and the lag time are discussed as applied to 3 catchments in Korea. Additionally, the shapes of equivalent ellipse are examined how they are transformed from upstream area to downstream one. As a result, the relationship between descriptors based on a equivalent ellipse a+b and $a+b+{\epsilon}OM$, and the lag time is shown to be close and the shape of ellipse is presented to approach a circle along the river downwards. Also, the notion of compactness which is used to express the shape of an irregular plan-form is tried to apply.