An improved Ia-S relation incorporating antecedent moisture in SCS-CN methodology

Abstract

Employing a large dataset of 84 small watersheds (area = 0.17 to 71.99 ha) of U.S.A., this paper investigates a number of initial abstraction (Ia)-potential maximum retention (S) relations incorporating antecedent moisture (M) as a function of antecedent precipitation (P5), and finally suggests an improved relation for use in the popular Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN) methodology for determination of direct runoff from given rainfall. The improved performance of the incorporated M = α √P5S and Ia =λS2/(S + M) relations, where λ is the initial abstraction coefficient, in the SCS-CN methodology exhibits the dependence of Ia on M, which is close to reality; the larger the M, the lesser will be Ia, and vice versa. Such incorporation obviates sudden jumps in the curve number variation with antecedent moisture condition, an unreasonable and undesirable feature of the existing SCS-CN model. © Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006.