Quantifying Dynamic Linkages Between Precipitation, Groundwater Recharge, and Streamflow Using Ensemble Rainfall-Runoff Analysis

Understanding streamflow generation at the catchment scale requires quantifying how different components of the system are linked, and how they respond to meteorological forcing. Here we present a proof-of-concept study characterizing and quantifying dynamic linkages between precipitation, groundwater recharge, and streamflow using a data-driven nonlinear deconvolution and demixing approach, Ensemble Rainfall-Runoff Analysis (ERRA). Streamflow in our mesoscale, intensively farmed test catchment is flashy, but occurs at time lags that are too long to be plausibly attributed to overland flow. Instead, ERRA's estimates of the impulse responses of groundwater recharge to precipitation, and of streamflow to groundwater recharge, imply that this intermittent streamflow is primarily driven by precipitation infiltrating to recharge groundwater, followed by discharge of groundwater to streamflow. ERRA reveals that streamflow increases nonlinearly with increasing precipitation intensity or groundwater recharge, and exhibits almost no response to precipitation or recharge rates of less than 10 mm d⁻¹. Groundwater recharge is both nonlinear, increasing more-than-proportionally with precipitation intensity, and nonstationary, increasing with antecedent wetness. Simulations with the infiltration model Hydrus-1D can reproduce the observed water table time series reasonably well (NSE = 0.70). However, ERRA shows that the model's impulse response is inconsistent with the real-world impulse response estimated from measured precipitation and groundwater recharge, illustrating that conventional goodness-of-fit statistics can be weak tests of model realism. Thus, our proof-of-concept study demonstrates how impulse responses estimated by ERRA can help clarify linkages between precipitation and streamflow at the catchment scale, quantify nonlinearity and nonstationarity in hydrologic processes, and critically evaluate simulation models.