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Baseflow separation

Conondale Mary River
Conondale Mary River. Source: Mattinbgn. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.

Version: 1.0

Date published:  9 May 2023

Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareALike Licence 4.0

Citation: Marsh, Z. (2023) Baseflow separation – Eco Risk Projector Plugin (version 1.0) [computer software]. Available at https://ecoriskprojector.net.au/.

About Baseflow separation

Baseflow separation is a process used to seperate hydrological data into baseflow and quickflow. This implementation uses the Lyne and Hollick (1979) digital filtering approach.

Model purpose

The purpose of the model is to separate hydrological data into baseflow and quickflow components. This last is completed through a 3 pass digital filtering method, as described by Ladson et al (A standard approach to baseflow separation using the Lyne and Hollick filter, 2013).

Development context

This model has been developed from the literature mentioned above.

Spatial application

This model and its default parameters were created for application in South East Queensland.

However, the model parameters could be edited to suit other locations with similar requirements.

Model description

Ecohydrological rules

This model applied the Lyne Hollick digital filter to seperate daily flow (or any data type desired) into daily baseflow and quickflow. This process is completed in 3 passes across the timeseries, with the baseflow and quickflow estimations from pass 3 used as the final results. This process is explained in more detail by Ladson et al (see references below).

Assessment method

This model has no assessment due to the format of its results.

Inputs

Data
  • Daily time series data. This can be any type (flow, depth, rainfall, evaporation, etc.) provided it is at the daily or sub-daily time step.
Parameter Sections
  • Data – define the data type to run analysis on. All time series data types are valid options.
  • Season – define the season to split data into for yearly summary. Provide a start and end date.

Outputs

  • Daily time series of baseflow and quickflow values for each pass
  • Yearly time series of baseflow and quickflow indices, along with mean baseflow and mean quickflow
  • Summary results giving the mean of the yearly results, for each indicator

User interface

Baseflow seperation parameters
Baseflow seperation parameters

Underlying code

This plugin is written in Python and its underlying code is publicly available from the Eco Risk Projector computation repository.

References

Ladson, A. R., Brown, R., Neal, B. and Nathan, R. (2013) A standard approach to baseflow separation using the Lyne and Hollick filter. Australian Journal of Water Resources 17(1): 25-34