Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8923-4054

Date Available

4-29-2020

Year of Publication

2020

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering (MSBiosyAgE)

College

Agriculture; Engineering

Department/School/Program

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Advisor

Dr. Dwayne Edwards

Abstract

Urbanization has long been a major factor in the hydrology of surrounding areas. Engineers are commonly tasked with mitigating the extra runoff that urbanization brings with it. The NRCS Curve Number (CN) method is a commonly-used approach to predicting the amount of runoff that will be experienced from a given area. However, this method is known to be highly simplified in model of the processes involved. This study focused on determining the relationships between soil bulk density, simulated rainfall events, hydrologic soil group (HSG) and runoff estimation (specifically via the NRCS CN method). It was determined that soil bulk density has a significant relationship to CN and runoff estimation. Simulated rainfall events had a different relationship to CN and runoff depending on the HSG in question. Hydrologic soil group was found to be significantly related to both CN and runoff, but the HSG effect is relatively weak. In general, it was determined that the recommended NRCS CN values were lower than experimentally determined CN values. Future studies can build on this work to explore empirical relationships that would enable adjustments to recommended NRCS CN values as a function of soil bulk density.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2020.172

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