Runoff as a stochastic process

Runoff stationary critical flow is investigated as stochastic process by means of two routing simulation models, a stream confluence, which has been interpreted as a Marcus-Lushnikov coalescence process, and a channel splitting model, which has been interpreted as a markov chain over a regular tree. Despite of the expected similarity due to expectation that they should be seen as one of the backward of the other, the initiation and the stopping methods used in algorithms influence strongly stream size distribution.