Title: A distributed converging overland flow model: 3. Application to natural watersheds
Abstract: The proposed distributed converging overland flow model is utilized to predict surface runoff from three natural agricultural watersheds. The Lax‐Wendroff scheme is used to obtain numerical solutions. For determination of the kinematic wave friction relationship parameter a simple relation between the parameter and topographic slope is hypothesized. The simple relation contains two constants which are optimized for each watershed by the Rosenbrock‐Palmer optimization algorithm. The model results are in good agreement with runoff observations from these watersheds. It is shown that if the model structure is sound, it will suffice to optimize model parameters on hydrograph peak only even for prediction of the entire hydrograph. The model results suggest that a distributed approach to kinematic wave modeling of watershed surface runoff is potentially promising and warrants further investigation.