Modelling land-cover-induced variations in hydrologic response: Picaninny Creek, Victoria

A lumped conceptual rainfall-runoff model has been applied to the Picaninny Creek catchment located in the southern highlands of Victoria, Australia. This catchment had undergone a change in hydrologic response due to clearfelling, and the model successfully represented this change in response. The model parameters governing volumetric throughput of water and evapotranspirative losses changed after the clearfelling, but those governing rates of recession of water from the catchment did not. The change in hydrologic response was more accurately represented by the model than by examination of the raw streamflow data, since the model takes into account any variations in rainfall and temperature which may have occurred at the same time as the clearfelling.