Mountain Hydrology Workshop, Bucharest, Romania, 26 September 2003
FORMATION AND REGULARITY OF THE RIVER FLOW
IN A FORESTED MOUNTAIN REGION
G. Gergov1, E. Rafailova2
1
2
National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, Sofia, Bulgaria, g_gergov@internat-bg.net
University of Forestry, Sofia, Bulgaria, erafailova@hotmail.com
The hydrological role of the forest ecosystems regarding formation of the river flow has been
a subject of various studies performed by numerous researchers during the past years.
The review of the studies performed about the role of the forest in hydrological phenomena
leads to the next two basic questions, not sufficiently revealed – the role of preliminary
saturation in formation of the river flow and the formation of sediment load of rivers on forest
mountain lands. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap partially. The studies have been
carried out on the basis of rich hydro-meteorological data information collected in the
ecological station, situated in “Undola” place, Rila Mountain in Bulgaria. The preliminary
wetness of the sample plots has been estimated on the basis of the hodographs of the water
discharges for several years by means of the analysis of the typical modes.
As a result a multi-parametric relationship (co-variance) is composed, which reveals the
formation of river floods depending on the preliminary saturation of the water catchments
area and precipitation. The co-variance can be used for modeling and predicting the formation
of outflow of the basin depending on its preliminary damping.