A simplified, vertically-averaged model of soil moisture interpreted at the daily time scale and forced by astochastic process of instantaneous rainfall events is compared with a vertically-averaged model which uses anon-overlapping rectangular pulse rainfall model and a more physically based description of infiltration. Themodels are compared with respect to the importance of short time-scale (intra-storm) variable infiltration indetermining the probabilistic structure of soil-moisture dynamics at the daily time-scale. Differences inapproach to infiltration modelling show only minor effects on the probabilistic structure of soil-moisturedynamics as simulated in the two models. The partitioning of losses during a single rainfall event are examinedclosely and the conditions under which surface-controlled runoff is significant, as a proportion of totallosses, are delineated.
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