HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES Hydrol. Process. 15, 2835 2838 (2001) DOI: 10.1002/hyp.

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INVITED COMMENTARY

Equifinality, a blessing in disguise?

Hubert H. G. Savenije
Delft University of Technology and IHE-Delft, 2601 DA Delft, The Netherlands Correspondence to: H. Savenije, IHE, P.O. Box 3015 2601, DA Delft, The Netherlands. E-mail: hsa@ihe.nl

Since Beven (1993, 1996, 2001) introduced the concept of equinality, it appears that it has become the curse of hydrology, or at least the curse of distributed hydrological modelling. In this comment it is argued that equinality is indeed at the heart of our hydrological laws and that without it many of these hydrological laws would not exist. So, as the argument goes, equinality is a blessing rather than a curse; it is in fact the justication for many of the hydrological theories we use. Equinality arises when in a hydrological model many different parameter sets are equally good at reproducing an output signal. Such models, often distributed models with a large number of parameters, are quite good at mimicking hydrological behaviour, but are not the right tools to predict what will happen if certain characteristics of the catchment change. Although these models may be based on physical relationships, they are not unequivocal and hence are not t to be used as predictive models. Although we can consider equinality as a nuisance since it implies that looking for more hydrological understanding through detailed distributed modelling is a dead-end track, it also offers an opening to the revival of larger-scale hydrological laws. The relatively simple empirical hydrological relations that govern hydrological processes such as the linear reservoir, Muskingums method, Mannings equation, dispersion equations for mixing in estuaries, and even Darcys law, are much more than strokes of luck. They come about after a process of averaging whereby the world becomes more regular and predictable as we zoom out and integrate further over space and time. Within the space over which we have integrated, an innite number of combinations of detailed occurrences is encapsulated, whereby many different combinations of these occurrences can lead to the same result. This too is equinality, which is not an unexpected problem we encounter but rather something inherent in the process of averaging. Many physical laws, such as the gas law (BoyleGay Lussac), Ohms law, etc. only become apparent after some form of averaging. To an observer the size of a molecule, the gas law stating that the product of volume and pressure is directly proportional to the temperature does not apply. In fact there is just a rather chaotic intercollision of gas molecules, which move faster as temperature rises. There are innite combinations of molecules, with local density variations, which to an outside observer of the gas container yield the same relation between pressure, volume and temperature. This
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Received 28 May 2001 Accepted 4 June 2001

Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

H. H. G. SAVENIJE

is an example of equinality, which is a necessary condition for the gas law to apply. The same applies to Ohms law. To an observer the size of an electron, the movement of electrons as a result of a difference in potential is probably rather chaotic. Some electrons are drawn into the range of an atom within the crystalline structure of the conductor, whereas others are pushed out. Conductors may consist of a nonhomogeneous combination of atoms with different characteristics that interact in a rather unpredictable way. The pattern of an average ow of electrons only becomes visible when we zoom out well beyond the scale of the atoms. Also here are innite combinations of situations leading to the same relation: Ohms law. Ohms law exists thanks to equinality. With groundwater we see the equations becoming simpler the further we integrate over space. The rst step of averaging is from mostly laminar, but chaotic, ow through the random pore spaces constituting the porous medium at the scale of a micrometre, into Darcys equation which applies at scales varying from 01 m to the size of an aquifer, as long as the medium is more or less homogeneous. Until this point, there is a strong analogy with Ohms law. The second step is the integration over a system of non-homogeneous aquifers with varying permeabilities and structures which, strangely enough, turns into an even more simple equation: the linear reservoir for groundwater depletion. The derivation from Darcys law to a linear reservoir has not yet been made, as far as I know. However, we know that a groundwater system that drains to a river induces a logarithmic recession curve, that (as is shown further on) stems from a linear reservoir concept. What we see therefore, is that the integration of Darcys law over a non-homogeneous catchment leads to a linear reservoir equation. Something similar takes place in open channel ow. Turbulence, bed forms, channel layout and bed material combined lead to Chezys or Mannings law for resistance to ow. At a higher level of aggregation, at the scale of a river reach, we know that the rather simple Muskingum method may be used very successfully for many practical applications.
Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An explanation for equations becoming simpler at higher levels of aggregation is still lacking, but I suspect that the answer may lie in what Sivapalan calls self-organization (Sivapalan and Zammit, 2001). Gravity and the erosive powers of our environment, including the water itself, bring about regular patterns and shapes in the boundary conditions through which water ows. These boundary conditions have a dominant inuence on the equations of motion. As a result, regularity begins to appear in our equations at a scale where this self-organization becomes apparent. Although hydrologists are quite willing to accept the general validity of Ohms law and the gas law, they are less enthusiastic about the general validity of hydrological laws such as manifested in the Muskingum method or the linear reservoir concept. The problem in hydrology is that the human observer can see, without any visual aids, the particles that move within the medium. This is confusing to the observer, because what he sees with his own eyes makes him blind to the regularity of the process at a higher level of aggregation (which he cannot see). Bloeschl (2001) in his recent commentary is in agreement with this. Pioneers of scaling are seldom eld hydrologists. When you are fascinated by the complexity of hydrological processes, it is difcult to accept that at a higher level of aggregation this complexity may become irrelevant. This was not so disturbing a few decades ago, when people were forced to study the processes at larger levels of aggregation, merely because they didnt have the detailed knowledge or computational and mathematical tools to analyse the magnitude of data that detailed observations produce. With the rise of the modern computer, however, the problem has become apparent and indeed acute. Hydrologists who are blinded by the details of the processes (i.e. cannot see the forest through the trees) have attempted to use the powerful computers that are now available to simulate hydrological behaviour in highly fragmented distributed models. It required a visionary like Keith Beven to see through this confusion. With the concept of equinality he has made us realize that hydrological laws are purely laws of averaging, which only have a meaning at the particular scale at which they
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are applied. Even worse, the parameters in our hydrological laws are a function of the level of averaging (the size of the catchment, primarily). A similar phenomenon takes place with salt intrusion in estuaries, through dispersion. At the scale of the water particle, the process is completely unpredictable, as many researchers have found out to their peril. At aggregated scales, regular patterns appear. In addition, the dispersion coefcient, obtained through calibration, increases with the scale of integration, both in time and space. This is because as the scale increases more mixing phenomena are captured into the dispersion coefcient. The predictability of the dispersion coefcient increases accordingly. During a discussion that the author once had with an expert on salt dispersion, the expert stated that it is impossible to make a predictive model for salt intrusion. The author disagreed. Savenije (1993) showed that a predictive model can very well be obtained if we base it on tidal average conditions. The longitudinal variation of the dispersion coefcient can be described mathematically as a function of the tidal average dispersion coefcient at the estuary mouth. The latter can be related to measurable physical parameters, which makes the model fully predictable, as a function of the upstream fresh discharge and tidal and geometric characteristics. In hydrology the situation is similar. In a linear reservoir the outow is assumed to be directly proportional to the storage. The coefcient of proportionality T is the time scale of the outow process. Assume S = QT where Q is the (groundwater) ow and S is the storage. Combination of this equation with the water balance equation during the dry season (no inow) @S = Q @t leads to Q = Q0 exp(t /T ) the recession curve of a hydrograph with time scale T .
Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The value of T can be derived from a depletion curve through curve tting. Although T has a physical meaning, the average residence time of the water in the linear reservoir, we should not forget that it is a regression parameter obtained through an averaging process. This time scale increases as we average over a larger catchment and becomes more stable as more phenomena enter into the equation. At very small plot scales, this relation loses its applicability and becomes highly variable from place to place. It loses predictability, just like the dispersion coefcient. As we move to larger catchment scales, it becomes more regular and may be related to physically signicant topographical, geological, soil and landuse parameters. This is the approach followed by hydrologists in the old days, before the introduction of distributed models. Now our thinking goes towards representative elementary watersheds: the smallest scale at which T has a signicant relation with physical parameters. The above depletion curve analysis applies to a linear reservoir, but it becomes even more important if we realize that the complete hydrological rainfall runoff process is nonlinear and that, according to Beven (2001) the implications of this nonlinearity should be taken into account in the formulation of our hydrological models. It took the discovery of equinality to convince us that perhaps a new data-based downward approach, as advocated by Sivapalan (e.g. in Jothityangkoon et al., 2001), and independently by Young (1998), is necessary to counterbalance our faith in the distributed physically-based models. Equinality may signal the end of the dead-end track of distributed modelling. However, it may be that it heralds the beginning of a new hydrology, which combines the old theories of linear and nonlinear reservoirs at the watershed scale with the computational powers of today.

References
Beven K. 1993. Prophesy, reality and uncertainty in distributed hydrological modelling. Advances in Water Resources 16: 41 51. Beven K. 1996. Equinality and uncertainty in geomorphological modelling. In The Scientic Nature of Geomorphology , Rhoads BL, Thorn CE (eds). Wiley: Chichester, UK; 289 313. Beven K. 2001. How far can we go in distributed hydrological modelling? Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 5(1): 1 12.

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Bloeschl G. 2001. Scaling in hydrology. Hydrological Processes 15: 709 711. Jothityangkoon C, Sivapalan M, Farmer D. 2001. Process controls of water balance variability in a large semi-arid catchment: downward approach to hydrological model development. Journal of Hydrology (in press). Savenije HHG. 1993. Predictive model for salt intrusion in estuaries. Journal of Hydrology 148: 203 218.

Sivapalan M, Zammit C. 2001. Conceptual model improvement by inclusion of catchment-scale process descriptions and landscape attributes. Presented at the XXVI General Assembly of the European Geophysical Society (EGS), Nice, France. Young PC. 1998. Data-based mechanistic modeling of environmental, ecological, economic and engineering systems. Environmental Modeling and Software 13: 105 122.

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