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Understanding the process of precipitation partitioning into evapotranspiration and streamflow is fundamental for water resource planning. The Budyko framework has been widely used to evaluate the factors influencing this process. Still, its application has primarily focused on studying watersheds with minimal human influence and on a relatively small number of factors. Furthermore, there are discrepancies in the literature regarding the effects of climatic factors and land use changes on this process. To address these gaps, this study aims to quantify the influence of climate and anthropogenic activities on streamflow generation in the contiguous United States. To accomplish this, we calibrated an analytical form of the Budyko curve from 1990 to 2020 for 383 watersheds. We developed regional models of , a free parameter introduced to account for controls of precipitation partitioning not captured in the original Budyko equation, within different climate zones. We computed 49 climatic and landscape factors that were related to using correlation analysis and stepwise multiple linear regression. The findings of this study show that human activities explained a low variance of the spatial heterogeneity of compared with the watershed slope and the synchronization between precipitation and potential evapotranspiration, nevertheless, urban development emerged as a factor in temperate climates, whereas irrigated agriculture emerged in cold climates. In arid climates, mean annual precipitation explains less than 20% of the spatial variability in mean annual streamflow; furthermore, this climate is the most responsive to changes in . These results provide valuable insights into how land use and climate interact to impact streamflow generation differently in the contiguous United States contingent on the regional climate, explaining discrepancies in the literature. 

Abstract Urban water supply systems in the United States are designed to be robust to a wide range of historical hydrological conditions in both their physical infrastructure and in the institutional arrangements that govern their use. However, these systems vary greatly in their capacity to respond to new and evolving stressors on water supplies, such as those associated with climate change. Developing a more precise understanding of the complexity of interactions between the environmental and human components of urban water systems, specifically via their institutions, has the potential to help identify institutional design choices that can foster proactive transitions to more sustainable operating states. This article adapts the Institutional Grammar (IG) within the Robustness of Coupled Infrastructure Systems Framework to assess how a heavily engineered system's institutional configuration may impact its ability to transition to more sustainable management practices. While use of the IG has historically been limited in larger‐N studies, our application demonstrates its flexibility in revealing variation in specific components across cases. The analysis finds the structure of formal institutions shape the interactions between actors differently, and that institutional diversity exists across environmental contexts. The extent to which this institutional diversity drives transitions remains an open question. The results highlight both the importance of and challenges involved with developing longitudinal data on social and natural system interactions.