Process / pipelineHydrology

Unit Hydrograph

The unit hydrograph (UH) is a linear transformation that converts rainfall excess into streamflow for a watershed. Introduced by Sherman in 1932, the UH assumes that rainfall-runoff response is linear and time-invariant, enabling synthesis of flood hydrographs from design storms for dam spillway design and flood risk assessment.

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Sources

  1. Sherman, L. K. (1932). Streamflow from rainfall by the unit graph method. Engineering News-Record, 108(14), 501-505. link
  2. Snyder, F. F. (1938). Synthetic unit-graphs. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 19(1), 447-454. DOI: 10.1029/TR019i001p00447
  3. Clark, C. O. (1945). Storage and the unit hydrograph. Journal of the American Water Works Association, 37(4), 419-432. link

Related methods

Referenced by

ScholarGateUnit Hydrograph (Unit Hydrograph Theory for Rainfall-Runoff Transformation). Retrieved 2026-06-04 from https://scholargate.app/en/civil-engineering/unit-hydrograph