Hydrologic signatures are quantitative metrics or indices that describe statistical or dynamical properties of hydrologic data series, primarily streamflow. Hydrologic signatures were first used in eco‐hydrology to assess alterations in flow regime, and have since seen wide uptake across a variety of hydrological fields. Their applications include extracting biologically relevant attributes of streamflow data, monitoring hydrologic change, analyzing runoff generation processes, defining similarity between watersheds, and calibrating and evaluating hydrologic models. Hydrologic signatures allow us to extract meaningful information about watershed processes from streamflow series, and are therefore seeing increasing use in emerging information‐rich areas such as global‐scale hydrologic modeling, machine learning, and large‐sample hydrology. This overview paper describes the background and development of hydrologic signature theory, reviews hydrologic signature use across a variety of applications, and discusses ongoing hydrologic signature research including current challenges.

中文翻译：

---

水文特征及其应用综述

水文特征是描述水文数据系列（主要是水流）的统计或动态属性的定量指标或指标。水文特征首先被用于生态水文学中，以评估流量状况的变化，此后，水文特征在各种水文领域得到了广泛的应用。它们的应用包括提取流量数据的生物学相关属性，监测水文变化，分析径流产生过程，定义流域之间的相似性以及校准和评估水文模型。水文签名使我们能够从水流序列中提取有关流域过程的有意义的信息，因此，在新兴的信息丰富的领域（例如全球规模的水文建模，机器学习和大样本水文学），其使用日益广泛。