@inproceedings{BrueckAndezhathMohananCaviedesVoulliemeetal., author = {Br{\"u}ck, Yasemine and Andezhath Mohanan, Anju and Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Hinz, Christoph and Zaplata, Markus K.}, title = {Spatio-temporal development of rill vegetation in the H{\"u}hnerwasser Catchment}, series = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2018, Vienna, Austria}, booktitle = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2018, Vienna, Austria}, publisher = {European Geophysical Society}, address = {Katlenburg-Lindau}, abstract = {The artificial catchment "H{\"u}hnerwasser" was built in a post-mining landscape, as a field experiment to observe and monitor early-development ecosystems at hillslope scale. Early on, rain-induced rill and channels formation was observed, followed by vegetation growth in between rills, and later on inside the rills. In this work, we aim to describe the temporal evolution of the spatial distribution of rill vegetation. In general terms, we hypothesize four different encroachment patterns might occur: (1) The vegetation spreads from the top of the rills downstream. The underlying hypothesis would be a higher establishment probability due to a lower velocity of surface runoff and therefore less transport probability compared to downstream rill segments. (2) The vegetation starts growing downstream and moves upwards. In this case we can hypothesize that the spatial distribution of the vegetation is dominated by water availability, which is higher or more stable downstream. (3) The vegetation encroaches from the sides into the rills, meaning that inter-rill vegetation governs vegetation encroachment inside the rills. (4) If no patterns are detected it might mean that the encroachment process depends strongly on very local conditions, or perhaps that the underlying assumption of an initially homogeneous seed distribution is false. To investigate the rills formation and rill vegetation encroachment processes, rills and vegetation patches inside these rills were identified and digitized from aerial photographs of the catchment from 2007 to 2012. Different vegetation types were identified based on the colour and texture of the patches. The geometrical properties of the rill segments and vegetation patches were used to define how the different vegetation types have distributed in space and how this distribution has changed over time. Rill mapping reveals a large increase of rill area from 2007 to 2008 and only a small rise from 2008 to 2009. Starting in 2010 dense vegetation prevents a precise mapping of the rills in the aerial photographs, so we assume that there is no change in rill area from 2009 to 2012. In 2007 vegetation covered only 1.4\% of the rill area. There is only a small increase of this area in 2008 compared to the later years. In 2012 more than 50\% of the rill area is covered by plants. Ten different vegetation types have been identified in the aerial photographs, starting with two types in 2007. By 2012 nine types are spotted in the rills of the catchment. Some of these vegetation types show an encroachment from up- to downstream (e.g. Tussilago farfara), some from down- to upstream like Phragmites australis, whose creeping rhizomes can also promote such spreading. Others reveal no patterns. To better assess and identify the underlying processes leading to these encroachment processes shown by the different vegetation types further data analysis -e.g. comparison with ground based vegetation mapping- and process-based hydrological modelling is necessary to fully explain these observations and assessing additional competition effects, which may be at play.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{CaviedesVoulliemeAndezhathMohananBruecketal., author = {Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Andezhath Mohanan, Anju and Br{\"u}ck, Yasemine and Hinz, Christoph}, title = {Rill hydrodynamics and its impact on rill vegetation encroachment: a modelling study of the constructed H{\"u}hnerwasser catchment}, series = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2018, Vienna, Austria}, booktitle = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2018, Vienna, Austria}, publisher = {European Geophysical Society}, address = {Katlenburg-Lindau}, abstract = {The H{\"u}hnerwasser catchment is a monitored, early-development constructed catchment within the Lower Lausatia post-mining landscape in Germany. Observations have shown that a sequence of landscape-forming processes occurred, including the initial vegetation establishment stages, which are the main interest of this study. In the initial stages of geomorphic development a surface drainage network of rills was formed as vegetation started to appear on the hillslopes and subsequently inside the rill network. Observations and analysis of the rill vegetation establishment suggest that different vegetation types encroach into the rill network at different times, rates and form different directions. We hypothesize that these encroachment processes may respond to the runoff properties of the catchment at such time: velocity distribution in the rills might play a significant role in flushing seeds in high-velocity reaches of the rill network, thus favouring the appearance of vegetation in low-velocity regions. Consequently, the goal of this study is to assess the magnitudes and spatiotemporal behaviour of velocity in the rill network, to assess its possible impact on seed flushing and rill vegetation encroachment. One rill subcatchment of H{\"u}hnerwasser was selected to perform an explorative study of rill hydrodynamics and their impact on vegetation establishment. Two vegetation states were simulated: bare hillslopes and vegetated hillslopes. The vegetated cover polygons were obtained from digitized aerial photography, and stochastically dissagregated 10-minute resolution precipitation data were used, selecting events with early, middle and late peak storm intensities. A 2D explicit finite volume scheme solving the Zero-Inertia approximation to the shallow water equations was used to simulate surface flow in the subcatchment. The preliminary modelling results suggest that that there is no clear overall velocity gradient in the downstream direction along the rills. In fact, velocity in the rills may increase or decrease along the rill following local topography and rill geometry. Consequently, no global trend for the probability of seeds being transported can be established. The results also shows that varying rainfall intensity and rainfall intrastorm distribution -in the absence of hillslope vegetation- does not affect the rill locations of maximum velocities, but mostly affect the magnitude of velocity. In the presence of hillslope vegetation -and thus heterogeneous infiltration conditions in the hillslopes- the spatial distribution of velocity is strongly affected, and can be in fact governed not by topography or rill geometry, but by the spatial heterogeneity of infiltration capacity. Furthermore, the time at which maximum discharge and velocities occur may not match that of maximum intensity. That is, emerging temporal dynamics arise due to the introduction of spatial heterogeneity, which also manifests in the fact that outflow from the subcatchment exhibits a intensity-thresholded behaviour.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{CaviedesVoulliemeHinz, author = {Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Hinz, Christoph}, title = {Convergent biomass, divergent patterns: Can initial conditions govern vegetation self-organisation?}, series = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2018, Vienna, Austria}, booktitle = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2018, Vienna, Austria}, publisher = {European Geophysical Society}, address = {Katlenburg-Lindau}, abstract = {Vegetation self-organisation in water-limited ecosystems in semi-arid climates has been extensively studied by means of numerical simulation using a set of different reaction-diffusion-equations. Most of such models and studies have been concerned with the long-term steady ecohydrological states on domains with periodic boundaries and forced by steady rainfall, whilst little interest has been given to the transient states which lead to them as well as the spatiotemporal multiscale nature of the feedback processes. It is generally accepted that alternative random initial biomass distributions do not significantly affect the resulting steady state vegetation patterns. However, the role of the initial hydrological conditions -initial surface and subsurface water- has not been explored, mainly due to the interest in the long-term steady state. Nonetheless, vegetation patterns are directly linked to the water distribution occurring at much shorter time scales than vegetation growth, and because they have been shown to be sensitive to annual rainfall, it is reasonable that the initially available water will also play a role. We therefore hypothesize that the initially available water will play a role in the transient process leading to a steady ecohydrological state, and that the steady vegetation patterns will differ in response to the water availability in time during the entire process. In this contribution we explore the role of initial hydrological conditions on both the transient and longterm steady ecohydrological state. A simulation study was performed using the HilleRisLambers-Rietkerk ecohydrological model on a flatland varying the initial available water whilst also spanning the rainfall gradient (90 - 360 mm/year) . The results were assessed in terms of the evolution and steady state of total biomass yield and hydrological water balance, as well as a quantitative assessment of both transient and steady vegetation patterns. The results show that the initially available water does play a role, not only in the early transient state, but in the long-term steady state, and indeed in the geometry of the converged vegetation pattern. Furthermore, although the steady state biomass yield may be the same for varying initial conditions, the final patterns still differ, e.g., a reduction to one-fourth initial water availability results in more but smaller vegetation patches, while a reduction to one-eigth initial water results in less, but larger patches, and a reduction to one-sixteenth results in a completely new pattern, although total biomass is the same for all. This suggests that long-term average rainfall may govern the total biomass but the initial conditions may play a relevant shaping role in the long term spatial distributions of steady ecohydrological states of water-limited ecohydrosystems. This is relevant, among other reasons, because the resilience of the system is associated to the vegetation patterns. It also suggests that neither the temporal distribution of rainfall nor the system's evolution cannot be neglected to understand the environmental factors which lead to a steady ecohydrological state, since multiple paths may be possible. This warrants further developments from the ecohydrological modelling community and further study of transient states through process-based models.}, language = {en} } @misc{CaviedesVoulliemeFernandezPatoHinz, author = {Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Fern{\´a}ndez-Pato, Javier and Hinz, Christoph}, title = {Cellular Automata and Finite Volume solvers converge for 2D shallow flow modelling for hydrological modelling}, series = {Journal of Hydrology}, volume = {563}, journal = {Journal of Hydrology}, issn = {0022-1694}, doi = {10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.06.021}, pages = {411 -- 417}, abstract = {Surface flows of hydrological interest, including overland flow, runoff, river and channel flow and flooding have received significant attention from modellers in the past 30 years. A growing effort to address these complex environmental problems is in place in the scientific community. Researchers have stud-ied and favoured a plethora of techniques to approach this issue, ranging from very simple empirically-based mathematical models, to physically-based, deductive and very formal numerical integration of systems of partial-differential equations. In this work, we review two families of methods: cell-based simulators - later called Cellular Automata - and Finite Volume solvers for the Zero-Inertia equation, which we show to converge into a single methodology given appropriate choices. Furthermore, this convergence, mathematically shown in this work, can also be identified by critically reviewing the exist-ing literature, which leads to the conclusion that two methods originating from different reasoning and fundamental philosophy, fundamentally converge into the same method. Moreover, acknowledging such convergence allows for some generalisation of properties of numerical schemes such as error behaviour and stability, which, importantly, is the same for the converging methodology, a fact with practical implications. Both the review of existing literature and reasoning in this work attempts to aid in the effort of synchronising and cross-fertilizing efforts to improve the understanding and the outlook of Zero-Inertia solvers for surface flows, as well as to help in clarifying the possible confusion and parallel develop-ments that may arise from the use of different terminology originating from historical reasons. Moreover, synchronising and unifying this knowledge-base can help clarify model capabilities, applicability and modelling issues for hydrological modellers, specially for those not deeply familiar with the mathematical and numerical details.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{CaviedesVoulliemeFernandezPatoHinz, author = {Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Fern{\´a}ndez-Pato, Javier and Hinz, Christoph}, title = {Zero-Inertia vs full shallow water equations: a comparison for rainfall-runoff modelling}, series = {Computational Methods in Water Resources XXII (CMWR 2018), Bridging gaps between data, models, and predictions}, booktitle = {Computational Methods in Water Resources XXII (CMWR 2018), Bridging gaps between data, models, and predictions}, pages = {2}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{CaviedesVoulliemeHinz, author = {Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Hinz, Christoph}, title = {An ecohydrological model to explore topographic and rainfall variability effects on vegetation self-organisation}, series = {Computational Methods in Water Resources XXII (CMWR 2018), Bridging gaps between data, models, and predictions}, booktitle = {Computational Methods in Water Resources XXII (CMWR 2018), Bridging gaps between data, models, and predictions}, pages = {2}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{VarraniCaviedesVoulliemeHinz, author = {Varrani, Arianna and Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Hinz, Christoph}, title = {Dynamic mapping of surface topografy at rainfall events}, series = {Proceedings of the 5th IAHR Europe Congress — New Challenges in Hydraulic Research and Engineering}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 5th IAHR Europe Congress — New Challenges in Hydraulic Research and Engineering}, editor = {Armanini, Aronne and Nucci, Elena}, publisher = {IAHR Secretariat, Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering}, address = {Madrid, Spain}, isbn = {978-981-11-2731-1}, pages = {139 -- 140}, abstract = {Landscape evolution forced by rainfall is simulated at the laboratory scale and dynamically tracked using six virtual sensors Kinect™ to ensure detailed meas-urements with relatively low-cost devices.}, language = {en} } @misc{Martı́nezArandaFernandezPatoCaviedesVoulliemeetal., author = {Mart{\i}́nez-Aranda, Sergio and Fern{\´a}ndez-Pato, Javier and Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Garc{\´i}a-Palac{\´i}n, Ignacio and Garc{\´i}a-Navarro, Pilar}, title = {Towards transient experimental water surfaces: A new benchmark dataset for 2D shallow water solver}, series = {Advances in Water Resources}, volume = {121}, journal = {Advances in Water Resources}, issn = {0309-1708}, doi = {10.1016/j.advwatres.2018.08.013}, pages = {130 -- 149}, abstract = {In the past decade, shallow water solvers have dramatically improved both in terms of accuracy and computational power. New mathematical models and numerical schemes have been systematically verified against 1D exact solutions and laboratory experiments. Despite the two-dimensional nature of some of these benchmark tests, none of them reports complete 2D water depth fields, but only a few profiles are measured and reported in the best case. This work reports a new benchmarking dataset for validation of shallow water solvers, in which two-dimensional transient water depth measurements are available for complex steady and transient laboratory flume experiments, ranging from transcritical steady flow to dam-break flows around obstacles and complex beds. The transient water surface was measured using a commercial-grade RGB-D sensing device which allows to capture a succession of color-coded point clouds at a high frequency. These experimental measurements are compared with 2D shallow water simulations carried out with an extensively tested finite volume solver. Results asses the suitability of this dataset to perform as benchmark tests, identifying potential limitations of current and future models.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{Martı́nezArandaFernandezPatoCaviedesVoulliemeetal., author = {Mart{\i}́nez-Aranda, Sergio and Fern{\´a}ndez-Pato, Javier and Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Garc{\´i}a-Palac{\´i}n, Ignacio and Garc{\´i}a-Navarro, Pilar}, title = {Towards transient 2D experimental water surfaces: strengthening SW model validation}, series = {HIC 2018, 13th International Conference on Hydroinformatics}, booktitle = {HIC 2018, 13th International Conference on Hydroinformatics}, editor = {La Loggia, Goffredo and Freni, Gabriele and Puleo, Valeria and De Marchis, Mauro}, doi = {10.29007/qpmx}, pages = {1324 -- 1331}, abstract = {The measurement and simulation of 2D free-surface shallow flows is carried out in this work. For the experimental study a 3D-sensing device (Microsoft Kinect) is used to measure both steady and transient water surface elevation fields with different flow characteristics. This procedure provides 640x480 px resolution water surface level point clouds with a frequency ranging from 8 Hz to 30 Hz. The experimental measurements are compared with 2D finite volume simulations carried out by means of a robust and well-balanced numerical scheme able to deal with flow regime transitions and wet/dry fronts. A good agreement is found between experimental and numerical results for all the cases studied, demonstrating the capability of the RGB-D sensor to capture the water free-surface position accurately. This new experimental technique, which allows us to obtain 2D water depth fields in open- channel flows, leads to a wide range of promising capabilities in order to validate new shallow water models and to improve their accuracy and performance.}, language = {en} } @misc{AlmawazrehCaviedesVoulliemeHinz, author = {Almawazreh, Albara and Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Hinz, Christoph}, title = {Solute dissipation regimes and rates controlled by soil evaporation and rainfall variability in heterogeneous soils}, series = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7-12 April 2019}, journal = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7-12 April 2019}, address = {Katlenburg-Lindau}, abstract = {Reactive solute leaching from the top soil has received wide attention as it relates to major environmental challenges like groundwater and river water pollution by leached reactive solutes such as agricultural pesticides or biochemical pollutants. Adequate understanding of how fast, when and how such solutes and possible contaminants are leached from the top soil is necessary to enhance agricultural practice, pollution risk assessment and overall water quality management. Many empirical studies have been carried on the subject, with varied their approaches and complexity, and have been carried out under different site and atmospheric conditions. Some ofsuch studies argue that properties of soils and solutes are dominant for the leaching process, while others emphasizeatmospheric drivers as a main trigger for preferential flow. Long residence times have also been observed, with solutes lingering in the soils long after initially introduced and after experiencing rainfall events. Modelling and analytical studies have been put forward to better explain these behaviours, but often neglecting some of of the sources of complexity (such as preferential flow and soil heterogeneity) or with simplified modelling strategies. In this work, we study reactive solute dissipation processes in a soil column with a contaminated top soil layer in response to rainfall events. To cope with a heterogeneous soil structure, within an intermediate-complexity and physically-based framework, we solve Richards equation together with a mobile-immobile soil model together with a non-equilibrium advection-diffusion reaction model in Hydrus1D. We perform an extensive analysis of the sensitivity of solute dissipation rates from the top soil in response to all permutations of a parameter space comprised of soil properties (immobile fraction, mobile-immobile mass transfer coefficient), solute properties (decay coefficient, adsorption coefficient), rainfall parameters (total precipitation, duration, frequency) and the presence or absence of evaporation. Results are assessed in terms of the resulting solute dissipation curves and are fitted to exponential decay curves for comparison purposes. The results show that different solute dissipation regimes exist in response to the dominant physical process under a particular set of conditions. We identify three dissipation regimes which exhibit characteristic time scales and dissipation curve shapes: an advection dominated regime occurring under particular rainfall conditions, an evaporation dominated regime occurring under low rainfall volume and intensity and a decay-dominated regime exists, in which the bio- or chemical- decay rate of the substance is large and therefore dominant. Our results also provide further evidence and rationale for long residence times (which have been previously noted in the literature) in the top soil under preferential flow conditions, as the complex interactions between different processes may favour at mobilisation or immobilisation of the solute, which can be related to the characteristic shapes of the dissipation curves and in turn the regimes. The results allow a better understanding of the controlling processes and the related parameters interactions that dominate each regime. The thorough sensitivity analysis shows that, within those regimes, certain properties have higher weight and respectively more attention should be given when investigating them in comprehensive leaching risk assessment.}, language = {en} } @misc{BrueckRojasCaviedesVoulliemeetal., author = {Br{\"u}ck, Yasemine and Rojas, Pedro and Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Hinz, Christoph}, title = {Processing of aerial images to detect vegetation cover and evaluate transient vegetation patch characteristics of H{\"u}hnerwasser catchment}, series = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7-12 April 2019}, journal = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7-12 April 2019}, address = {Katlenburg-Lindau}, abstract = {The artificial catchment "H{\"u}hnerwasser" was built in a post-mining landscape, as a field experiment to observe and monitor early-development ecosystems at first catchment scale. As vegetation is a key driver of hydrological catchment behavior, spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of vegetation affects water redistribution from plot to catchment scale. In the context of early ecosystem development, quantifying changes in vegetation structures is an obvious indicator for state transitions. The first years of ecosystem development at the H{\"u}hnerwasser catchment showed rapidly increasing complexity of emerging structures associated with rising vegetation cover and increasing number of plant species. This work will focus on characterizing vegetation cover using aerial images aiming to describe spatial structures and how those evolve in time. The early stages are especially of interest. The structure is therefore characterized by the area of the catchment covered by vegetation, the number of vegetation patches, the mean and maximum patch size and a form factor (area of patch divided by its perimeter). Aerial images with a resolution at cm scale were taken once per year from 2007 to 2018. Binary maps are generated by setting thresholds for red, green and blue channels to differentiate between vegetation cover and bare soil. To evaluate the consistency of the binary images of each channel these images were stacked and compared. The performance of the method was tested by using a set of combinations of thresholds and a comparison with manual mapping of vegetation cover at an image subset was made. The blue channel seems to be very sensitive to detect vegetation and a better differentiation of vegetation and dark/wet soil can be achieved by setting the thresholds of the channels in a specific order. The structures derived by the classification into vegetated and bare soil are more important in the early years of ecosystem development. In those years (2007 to 2011) the most changes took place. As time advances vegetation became less patchy and other characteristics need to be implemented to describe the vegetation cover, taking into account different plant functional types.}, language = {en} } @misc{CaviedesVoulliemeHinz, author = {Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Hinz, Christoph}, title = {Transient trajectories in vegetation patterns spawning from non-equilibrium initial conditions and singular perturbations}, series = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7-12 April 2019}, journal = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7-12 April 2019}, address = {Katlenburg-Lindau}, abstract = {Vegetation self-organisation in water-limited ecosystems in semi-arid climates has been extensively studied by means of numerical simulation using a set of different reaction-diffusion-equations. Most of such models and studies have been concerned with the long-term steady ecohydrological steady states on domains with periodic boundary conditions and forced by steady rainfall. A vast majority of the modelling literature on vegetation self-organisation exists around near-equilibrium conditions. One of the clearest examples of this is that most of the published numerical results have been obtained by evolving near-equilibrium initial conditions to asymptotic steady states, since researchers have been historically interested in the resilience and stability of the systems to perturbation around converged, steady (equilibrium) states and little interest has been given to the transient states which lead to the equilibrium states. Nonetheless, ecohydrological theory recognises that dryland ecosystems can often be far-from-equilibrium systems, in quasi-permanent transient condition, exhibiting non-linear responses to boundary conditions and forcings. This prompts the question of how different the behaviour of the system can be when far-from equilibrium. In this contribution we explore the role of far-from equilibrium initial hydrological conditions on both the transient and long-term asymptotically steady ecohydrological states. A simulation study was performed using the HilleRisLambers-Rietkerk ecohydrological model on a flatland varying the initial available water both near and far from equilibrium whilst also spanning the rainfall gradient (90 - 360 mm/year), performing simulations up to 200 years long. The results were assessed in terms of the evolution of total biomass yield and hydrological water balance, as well as a quantitative assessment of vegetation patterns. The results show that equilibrium conditions always yield smooth system trajectories, with little over- or undershooting, converging to the well-established patterns in the literature. However, as initial conditions move further away from equilibrium, the patterns start to differ, both in their temporal trajectory as in their long-term stable states. Conditions closer to equilibrium generate patterns with quantitative differences when compared to equilibrium conditions (e.g., larger spots). Conditions far from equilibrium can result in an entirely different hybrid patterns, consisting of a mix of spots, arcs and spirals. We evaluate these differences both qualitatively (by observing the patterns) and quantitatively, through a set of geometric indicators which describe the patterns. The results show that the patterns are history dependent and suggest that published results so far are only a subset of possible patterns. Additionally, the quantitative assessment of pattern properties in time shows that although patterns appear steady, they may indeed be slowly changing over time, while the total biomass and vegetation cover are steady early on. This has implications on the definitions of ecohydrological steady states. We also show that the effects of the idealised initial conditions on model results can be analogous to singular hydrometeorological events, as even stable patterns can be shifted into hybrid patterns by single events. Furthermore, we also explore how the new hybrid patterns compare to the well-established ones in terms of resilience to hydrological perturbations.}, language = {en} } @misc{KhoshBinGhomashCaviedesVoulliemeHinz, author = {Khosh Bin Ghomash, Shahin and Caviedes-Voulli{\`e}me, Daniel and Hinz, Christoph}, title = {Effects of topography and infiltration heterogeneity on surface runoff and connectivity in the Huehnerwasser catchment}, series = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7-12 April 2019}, journal = {European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7-12 April 2019}, address = {Katlenburg-Lindau}, abstract = {The Huehnerwasser catchment is a monitored, early-development constructed catchment within the Lower Lausatia post-mining landscape in Germany. From the initial bare catchment state, a sequence of landscape-forming processes occurred, including erosion-based topographic change and vegetation establishment, which are at the centre of this study. Erosion-based topographic change is strongly driven by surface runoff, while in turn itself also modifying runoff in the catchment. These topographic changes can have a significant impact on the hydrological response of a catchment, as they can affect flow paths, flow speeds and rainfall-runoff-infiltration partitioning, all of which manifest in different ways in runoff hydrographs in response to rainfall events. Vegetation establishment enhances local infiltration capacity, introducing infiltration heterogeneity, thus affecting the topography-controlled flowpaths as water infiltrates at vegetation patches. Critical-zone observatories and monitored early-development systems allow to document signatures of the evolution of catchments and to correlate certain behaviours to processes. However, readily and easily achievable runoff signatures often cannot provide a clear nor full description of process interactions, as the individual roles of processes are stacked together, and strongly shaped by the temporal distribution of rainfall, making it very difficult to disentangle the effects of each process, and making modelling a necessary approach to understand these interactions and their manifestations. All such processes occur at small spatial scales, and are difficult to observe or assess when experimentally studying catchment hydrology. Moreover, given that the complexity of processes contributing to morphological changes and the corresponding alteration of runoff signatures, single catchment experiments and even comprehensive monitoring programmes of whole catchments will neither allow to decipher all processes interactions nor will it allow to apply a statistically derived experimental. In this work, we study the effects that spatial distributions of surface topography and infiltration properties have on surface runoff and surface connectivity in response to single rainfall events, in the context of the Huehnerwasser catchment. We simulate rainfall/runoff processes by means of a physically-based, spatially explicit surface flow model, and assess the results in terms of hydrological signatures (hydrograph, hydrological balance), spatial distribution of the hydrodynamics of runoff, and surface flow connectivity. To do this, we use several DEMs of the H{\"u}hnerwasser catchment recorded during the erosion-based development of the surface (2006-2010), different hypothetical infiltration properties distributions, and a set of different singular rainfall events. The study allows to observe the individual effects that topographic properties and infiltration distributions have on the hydrograph signatures and connect cause-and-effect through an intermediate, conceptual property of the system: surface runoff connectivity, arguably an indicator of hydrological organisation of the runoff response. Moreover, by systematic analysis, the interactions between topography and infiltration can also be assessed in the hydrograph and explained through connectivity. The results show a range of possible magnitudes of influence of topography and infiltration on the runoff response, while highlighting that the onset of runoff and the rising limb of the hydrograph are mostly affected by these features and their interactions, and strongly related to surface runoff connectivity.}, language = {de} }