Base‐Flow Recessions—A Review

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Abstract
Hydrologists have studied base‐flow recessions for one hundred years or more. By the early nineteen hundreds much of the basic mathematical development was completed, and some methods of hydrograph analysis were known. Recent mathematical work, although repetitive to some extent of the earlier efforts, has the advantage that it assesses more closely the effects of the simplifying assumptions used to obtain solutions. Most workers have preferred to follow graphical or statistical rather than mathematical approaches. The reasons appear to lie mainly in problems caused by the assumptions and in difficulties in interpreting the real stream hydrograph. Also, base flow can come from numerous sources besides ground water. Other complications arise from the question of whether the basin response is linear or nonlinear, because the response is a function of various geologic and hydrologic factors in addition to those considered in the mathematical derivations.