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title: "Subcatchments - Description"
canonical: "https://help.innovyze.com/space/infoswmm/17599855/Subcatchments%20-%20Description"
format: markdown
---
Subcatchments are hydrologic units of land whose topography and drainage system elements direct surface runoff to a single discharge point. The user is responsible for dividing a study area into an appropriate number of Subcatchments, and for identifying the outlet point of each Subcatchment. Discharge outlet points can be either nodes of the drainage system or other Subcatchments.


Subcatchments can be divided into pervious and impervious subareas. Surface runoff can infiltrate into the upper soil zone of the pervious subarea, but not through the impervious subarea. Impervious areas are themselves divided into two subareas - one that contains depression storage and another that does not. Runoff flow from one subarea in a Subcatchment can be routed to the other subarea, or both subareas can drain to the Subcatchment outlet.

Infiltration of rainfall from the pervious area of a Subcatchment into the unsaturated upper soil zone can be described using three different models:

- Horton infiltration
- Modified Horton
- Green-Ampt infiltration
- Modified Green-Ampt
- SCS Curve Number infiltration

To model the accumulation, re-distribution, and melting of precipitation that falls as snow on a Subcatchment, it must be assigned a snow pack object. To model groundwater flow between an aquifer underneath the Subcatchment and a node of the conveyance system, the Subcatchment must be assigned a set of Groundwater Parameters. Pollutant buildup and washoff from Subcatchments are associated with the land uses assigned to the Subcatchment.


The other principal input parameters for Subcatchments include:

- assigned raingage
- outlet node or Subcatchment
- assigned land uses
- tributary surface area
- percent impervious
- slope
- characteristic width
- Manning's N for overland flow on both pervious and impervious areas
- depression storage in both pervious and impervious areas
- percent of impervious area with no depression storage
- infiltration parameters
- groundwater parameters (optional)
- snow melt parameters (optional)

Output results computed for Subcatchments include:

- rainfall rate
- runoff rate
- runoff mass loading of each water quality constituent.