Hydrological Cycle

DISTRIBUTION OF WATER IN THE HYDROSPHERE Reservoir Total Water (%) Total Total Fresh Fresh Water Water (%) (Unfrozen) (%)

Oceans & Seas Snow & Ice

Groundwater Lakes & Rivers Saline

97.54 1.81
0.63 0.007

73.9
25.7 -

98.4 -

Lakes & Rivers Fresh

Atmosphere

0.009
0.001

0.36
0.04

1.40
0.20

SPLASH EROSION

Only effective when the rain falls with sufficient intensity. Soil particles detached and moved short distances effects solely on-site. Although large quantities of soil may be moved, it is all merely redistributed back over the surface of the soil.
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SPLASH EROSION
On steep slopes, there will be a slight net downslope movement of splashed soil. Thus a more descriptive term might be 'rainsplash redistribution'. As rainsplash requires high rainfall intensities, it is most effective under convective rainstorms in equatorial regions. Rainsplash is relatively ineffective where rain falls with a low intensity (e.g. because rainfall is of frontal origin), as in USA or north Europe.
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SURFACE RUNOFF
Rainfall sometimes does not infiltrate (soak into) the ground, but flows downhill (on sloping surfaces) under the influence of gravity : Surface Runoff or Overland Flow. Runoff occurs due to two reasons: 1. If rain arrives too quickly to infiltrate (i.e. high intensity) - Infiltration Excess Runoff, or Hortonian Runoff. 2. If the soil is already fully saturated (or frozen) Saturation Excess Runoff.
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SURFACE RUNOFF
Runoff moves downhill first as a thin diffuse film of water which has lost virtually all the kinetic energy it possessed as falling rain. This runoff (or Sheet Wash) moves only slowly and is generally incapable of detaching or transporting soil particles. The microtopography (i.e. small-scale pattern of irregularities) of the soils surface tends to cause this overland flow to concentrate in closed depressions, which slowly fill: this is known as detention storage or ponding.
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Sheet Erosion

SURFACE RUNOFF
Both flowing water and water in detention storage, protect the soil from raindrop impact, so that rainsplash erosion decreases over time within a storm, as the depth of surface water increases. If rain continues, increasing depth of water will eventually overtop the microtopographic depressions. Overland flow that is released in this way is likely to flow downhill more quickly and in greater quantities (i.e. possess more flow power as a result of its kinetic energy), and so may be able to begin transporting and even detaching soil particles. Where it does so, the soils surface will be lowered slightly.
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RILLS & GULLEYS Lowered areas form preferential flow paths for subsequent flow, and these flow paths are in turn eroded further. Eventually, this positive feedback results in small, well-defined linear concentrations of overland flow (microrills or traces). In many cases, individual microrills become ineffective over time due to sedimentation. A subset, however, grow further to become rills; and a smaller subset may go on to develop into gullies.
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RILL & GULLEY EROSION Process of competition between microrills and rills leads to self-organized formation of networks of erosional channels, which form efficient pathways for the removal of water from hillslopes. It is in such erosional channels that water erosion also operates most effectively to detach and remove soil by its kinetic energy. In most situations erosion by concentrated flow is the main agent of erosion by water.
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RILL & GULLEY EROSION

As erosional channels increase in size (i.e. larger rills & gullies), processes as gravitational collapse of channel walls and heads increase in importance. Runoff & sediment from rills & gullies may be moved into ditches, stream and rivers, and so transported well away from the point of origin. Sediment may also be deposited within the rill or gully, or beyond the rill or gullys confines in a depositional fan, at locations where the gradient slackens. Sediment may be stored for a variable period of time, until a subsequent erosion event is of sufficient size to re-erode the 11 stored sediment.

RILL EROSION

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GULLY EROSION

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OVERLAND FLOW
Flow-dominated erosional channels separated by interrill areas where dominant processes are rainsplash and diffuse overland flow. Boundaries between rill and interrill areas are both ill-defined and constantly shifting. Subsurface flow sometimes, may be important in determining where channel erosion begins and develop (e.g. at base of slopes, and in areas of very deep soils such as tropical saprolites). Meltwater from thawing snow operates in a broadly similar way to rain-derived overland flow, detaching and transporting unfrozen soil in areas of concentrated flow. 14

BADLANDS

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