Streamflow Generation

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Most graduate students and practitioners addressing issues related to the flow of water in streams use models—to solve problems and predict outcomes. But those models are often based on antiquated notions of how catchments generate streamflow. Streamflow Generation: Processes and Perceptual Models is a new narrative of what we know, what we think we know and what we need to know in terms of the flow pathways, sources and travel times of water through headwater catchments. Written by a field hydrologist, the book lowers the barrier of entry into this process hydrology world. The author covers the period from the first field-based measurements in the early twentieth century to the development of early rainfall–runoff concepts, the great geographic expansion of studies during the 1960s International Hydrological Decade and the radical shifts in our understanding resulting from using isotope tracers in catchment hydrology. He then covers our modern understanding of how catchments store and release water at the point, hillslope and catchment scales and how bottom-up and top-down measures have been used to develop perceptual models. The book ends by discussing the opportunities and challenges for catchment science and what remains to be discovered in terms of hydrological connectivity, sources, residence times and transit time distributions of streamflow and plant transpiration. The throughline of the book is that field work and field discovery is an essential part of hydrological science and that what remains to be discovered about streamflow generation is vast compared to what is now known.</jats:p>