One of the most important factors for estimating a flood runoff from streams is the lag time. It is well known that the lag time is affected by the morphometric properties of basin which can be expressed by catchment shape descriptors. In this paper, the notion of the geometric characteristics of an equivalent ellipse proposed by Moussa(2003) was applied for calculating the lag time of geomorphologic instantaneous unit hydrograph(GIUH) at a basin outlet. The lag time was obtained from the observed data of rainfall and runoff by using the method of moments and the procedure based on geomorphology was used for GIUH. The relationships between the basin morphometric properties and the hydrological response were discussed based on application to 3 catchments in Korea. Additionally, the shapes of equivalent ellipse were examined how they are transformed from upstream area to downstream one. As a result, the relationship between the lag time and descriptors was shown to be close, and the shape of ellipse was presented to approach a circle along the river downwards. These results may be expanded to the estimation of hydrological response of ungauged catchment.