Development of synthetic unit hydrograph for small watershed

Synthetic unit hydrograph of a watershed provides a means for studying the hydrologic response of the watershed in absence of stream flow data. Three different approaches, viz. (a) Snyder (1938) method with modification in computation of time base as suggested by Mutreja (1986); (b) Snyder (1938) method with modifications in computations of time to peak as suggested by Linsley et al. (1958) and time base suggested by Mutreja (1986); and (c) computation of time to peak and time base using regression equations as proposed by Gavali et al. (2004) and computation of peak discharge using SCS triangular unit hydrograph theory, were tried to develop synthetic unit hydrograph for a watershed (WS1) at Aagadgaon in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra State (India) using the pertinent watershed and stream flow data from adjacent watershed (WS2). The third approach seems to be better as it involved more morphological characteristics of a watershed for computation of time to peak and time base of unit hydrograph and least absolute error.