STREAM CHANNEL SYSTEM

A method has been developed to predict outflow hydrographs for a specific reach of ephemeral stream channel on the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed in south eastern Arizona.Thevolumeand peak discharges oftheoutflow hydrographs were predicted from the volumes of the inflow hydrographs. A three-parameter gamma distribution function was used to represent the inflow and outflow hydrographs. Two methods were used to fit the gamma distribution to the shape of the outflow hydrograph. Regression equations were developed to relate the parameters of the outflow distribution to the parameters of the inflow distribution graph. Best results were obtained when both the inflow and outflow hydrographs were single-peaked.