A NOVEL APPROACH TO ESTIMATING THE SHARE OF UNDERGROUND FEEDING OF RIVERS

The surface runoff of rivers can usually be measured by various methods at hydrometeorological stations. However, calculating the fraction of underground feeding (baseflow) of rivers is a very difficult hydrologic sphere. For this purpose, step-by-step and indirect methods are often used in hydrology. In the article, a new hydrological approach is proposed to determine the infiltration properties of soils and the underground share in the nutrition of rivers. The new method allows us to estimate the fraction of underground water in the river basin with any geographical conditions, with or without observation data. The baseflow in the rivers of the southern slope of the Greater Caucasus located in the Republic of Azerbaijan was calculated using the new approach, and it was found that there was a very small difference between the actual and the results obtained with our proposed methodology. Thus, in 73 cases this difference did not exceed ±10%, and in only 27 cases the error was slightly higher than 10%.