WATER SUPPLY. This article is confined to the collection and storage of water for domestic and industrial uses and irrigation, and its purification on a large scale The conveyance of water is dealt with in the article Aqueduct.
Collecting Areas
Surface Waters.—Any area, large or small, of the earth’s surface from any part of which, if the ground were impermeable, water would flow by gravitation past any point in a natural watercourse is commonly known in Europe as the “hydrographic basin” above that point. In English it has been called indifferently the “catchment basin,” the “gathering ground,” the “drainage area” and the “watershed.” The latter term, though originally equivalent to the German Wasserscheide—“water-parting”—is perhaps least open to objection. The water-parting is the line bounding such an area and separating it from other watersheds. The banks of a watercourse or sides of a valley are distinguished as the right and left bank respectively, the spectator being understood to be looking down the valley.
The surface of the earth is rarely impermeable, and the structure of the rocks largely determines the direction of flow of so much of the rainfall as sinks into the ground and is not evaporated. Thus the figure and area of a surface watershed may not be coincident with that of the corresponding underground watershed; and the flow in any watercourse, especially from a small watershed, may, by reason of underground flow from or into other watersheds, be disproportionate to the area apparently drained by that watercourse.
When no reservoir exists, the volume of
continuous supply from any watershed area
is evidently limited to the minimum,
or, so-called, extreme dry weather flow of the stream draining it. This
cannot be determined from the rainfall;
it entirely depends upon the power of the
Dry weather flow
of stream.
soil and rock to store water in the particular
area under consideration, and to yield it continuously
to the stream by means of concentrated
springs or diffused seepage. Mountain
areas of 10,000 acres and upwards, largely
covered with moorland, upon nearly impermeable
rocks with few water-bearing fissures, yield in temperate
climates, towards the end of the driest seasons, and
therefore solely from underground, between a fifth and a
quarter of a cubic foot per second per 1000 acres. Throughout
the course of the river Severn, the head-waters of which
are chiefly supplied from such formations, this rate does not
materially change, even down to the city of Worcester, past
which the discharge flows from 1,256,000 acres. But in smaller
areas, which on the average arc necessarily nearer to the water-parting,
the limits are much wider, and the rate of minimum
discharge is generally smaller.
Thus, for example, on 1000 acres or less, it commonly falls to one-tenth of a cubic foot, and upon an upland Silurian area of 940 acres, giving no visible sign of any peculiarity, the discharge fell, on the 21st of September 1893, to one-thirty-fifth of a cubic foot per second per 1000 acres. In this case, however, some of the water probably passed through the beds and joints of rocks to an adjoining valley lying at a lower level, and had both streams been gauged the average would probably have been considerably greater. The Thames at Teddington, fed largely from cretaceous areas, fell during ten days in September 1898 (the artificial abstractions for the supply of London being added) to about one-sixth of a cubic foot, and since 1880 the discharge has occasionally fallen, in each of six other cases, to about one-fifth of a cubic foot per second per 1000 acres. Owing, however, to the very variable permeability of the strata, the tributaries of the Thames, when separately gauged in dry seasons, yield the most divergent results. It may be taken as an axiom that the variation of minimum discharges from their mean values increases as the separate areas diminish. In the eastern and south-eastern counties of England even greater variety of dry weather flow prevails than in the west, and upon the chalk formations there are generally no surface streams, except such as burst out after wet weather and form the so-called “bournes.” On the other hand, some rocks in mountain districts, notably the granites, owing to the great quantity of water stored in their numerous fissures or joints, commonly yield a much higher proportion of so-called dry weather flow.
When, however, a reservoir is employed to equalize the flow during and before the period of dry weather, the minimum flow continuously available may be increased to a much higher figure, depending upon the capacity of that reservoir in relation to the mean flow of the stream supplying Rainfall. it. In such a case the first essential in determining the yield is to ascertain the rainfall. For this purpose, if there are no rain-gauges on the drainage area in question, an estimate may be formed from numerous gaugings throughout the country, most of which are published in British Rainfall, initiated by the late Mr G. J. Symons, F.R.S., and now carried on by Dr H. R. Mill.[1] But except in the hands of those who have spent years in such investigations, this method may lead to most incorrect conclusions. If any observations exist upon the drainage area itself they are commonly only from a single gauge, and this gauge, unless the area is very level, may give results widely different from the mean fall on the whole area. Unqualified reliance upon single gauges in the past has been the cause of serious errors in the estimated relation between rainfall and flow off the ground.
The uncertainties are illustrated by the following actual example: A battery of fourteen rain-gauges, in the same vertical plane, on ground having the natural profile shown by the section (fig. 1), gave during three consecutive years the respective falls shown by the height of the dotted lines above the datum line.
Fig. 1.
Thus on the average, gauge C recorded 20% more than gauge D only 70 ft. distant; while at C, in 1897, the rainfall was actually 30% greater than at J only 560 ft. away. The greatly varying distribution of rainfall over that length of 1600 ft. is shown by the dotted lines measured upwards from the datum to have been remarkably consistent in the three years; and its cause—the path necessarily taken in a vertical plane by the prevailing winds blowing from A towards N—after passing the steep bank at C D—may be readily understood. Such examples show the importance of placing any rain-gauge, so far as possible, upon a plane surface of the earth—horizontal, or so inclined that, if produced, especially in the direction of prevailing winds, it will cut the mean levels of the area whose mean rainfall is intended to be represented by that gauge. It has been commonly stated that rainfall increases with the altitude. This is broadly true. A rain-cloud raised vertically upwards expands, cools and tends to precipitate; but in the actual passage of rain-clouds over the surface of the earth other influences are at work.
Fig. 2.
In fig. 2 the thick line represents the profile of a vertical section crossing two ranges of hills and one valley. The arrows indicate the directions of the prevailing winds. At the extreme left the rain-clouds are thrown up, and if this were all, they would precipitate a larger proportion of the moisture
- ↑ Since the above was written, this work has been taken over by the “British Rainfall Organization.”
