ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way water moves across and through a landscape. Measuring water budgets is a common approach undertaken across river basins whereby the proportion of water delivered to the basin from the atmosphere that runs off as river flow is calculated. Techniques for measuring river discharge and calculating runoff efficiency are presented in the chapter. The chapter shows how the rate at which water is delivered to the ground surface and the pathways and speed at which water travels across and through a landscape may be impacted upon by climate change and land-management activity, and how these factors may affect flood risk and water resources. River channels tend to be naturally dynamic, changing form and location through time. Management of river channels has traditionally tried to restrict their dynamism to protect infrastructure or landholdings. However, such modifications impact upon natural processes resulting in knock-on effects on biodiversity, sediment dynamics and water flows. Hence the chapter notes that river restoration projects are now trying to reverse such negative management impacts and require a more sensitive understanding of channel sediment and water dynamics.
