Climate, soil, and vegetation: 7. A derived distribution of annual water yield

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Abstract
The average annual soil moisture balance, as derived from the mechanics of storm and interstorm soil moisture movement and from the statistics of the climatic variables, is used to define the average annual soil moisture. This soil moisture is used in the equation for average annual yield to give a first‐order approximation of the annual precipitation yield function. This function is used to transform the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of annual precipitation into the cdf of annual yield, and application is made in a subhumid and in an arid climate. The derived yield frequency function is seen to be sensitive to the soil and vegetal properties. Proper selection of these parameters brings close agreement with observed streamflow‐frequency and suggests the model's utility for parameterizing drainage basins with respect to effective average soil and vegetal properties.