Franklin F. Snyder
world. It was used in a lot of different countries. I don't know exactly why, but it
did spread around.
But actually, the best paper I wrote never really got much publicity or recognition.
I think I had ideas then that people are still discovering as new.
Q.
Which one was that?
"The Conception of Runoff Phenomena.
A
Q ..
Oh, okay.
A ..
You know, in the old days, they would talk of runoff as a percent of rainfall, which
would make you think that if you had an inch of rainfall, you were getting one tenth
of an inch off of the whole basin, if you were getting 10 percent. That's not the way
it happens. Then Horton had his infiltration theory, which is a great theory, but
again, it isn't really the case. It's what happens if you take a square foot or a square
yard, that's what happens. But on a basin-wide basis, it doesn't exactly work that
way. A lot of procedures still use it, and it's still, I guess, accepted as a true
phenomenon. But again, it isn't quite what happens on a natural river basin.
So in this conception of runoff phenomena, I hypothesized a basin with the areas
lined up according to depth to the ground-water table. There are certain areas which
have the shallowest depths and which become saturated first. My theory was that
the soil, except for very exceptionally heavy rains, the soils have no limiting
infiltration capacity. The soils will take the rain until they get saturated, and then
you start getting surface runoff.
I mentioned the subsurface flow before, you're getting subsurface flow, too. The
idea of sub-surface runoff was a significant development. However there were
several other people working on it at the same time. I hypothesized, just as a model,
the areas closest to the channels would saturate first and that's where your surface
runoff would come from. So if you're getting 10 percent runoff, instead of 10
percent from the whole area, you're getting 100 percent from 10 percent of the area,
and that area always produces the first runoff.
Well, that was in this conception of runoff phenomena. Some 15 or 20 years later,
they started talking about partial-area-runoff, which is that same thing, that there are
certain areas that always produce the initial runoff and that area expands as the
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