A rain duration and modified AMC-dependent SCS-CN procedure for long duration rainfall-runoff events

Abstract

This paper presents a rain duration-dependent procedure based on the popular Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN) methodology for computation of direct surface runoff from long duration rains. Curve numbers are derived from long-term daily rainfall-runoff data, and antecedent moisture condition (AMC) related with antecedent duration. Analysis of data from five Indian (large, in terms of area) watersheds reveals the calculated curve numbers to decrease with the considered duration, showing the existence of a characteristic value of minimum CN or maximum initial abstraction to occur in a watershed for a pre-selected AMC. The testing of the proposed procedure on the separate (measured) rainfall-runoff event data sets from the same watersheds suggests satisfactory workability of the method.