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The prediction of hydrological phenomena using simpler hydrological models requires less computing power and input data compared to the more complex models. Ordinarily, a more complex, white-box model would be expected to have better predictive capabilities than a simple grey box or black-box model. But complexity may not necessarily translate to better prediction accuracy or might be unfeasible in data scarce areas or when computer power is limited. Therefore, the shift of hydrological science towards the more process-based models needs to be justified. To answer this, the paper compares 2 hydrological models: (a) the simpler tank model; and (b) the more complex TOPMODEL. More precisely, the difference in performance between tank model as a lumped model and the TOPMODEL concept as a semi-distributed model in Atari River catchment, in Eastern Uganda was conducted. The objectives were: (1) To calibrate tank model and TOPMODEL; (2) To validate tank model and TOPMODEL; and (3) To compare the performance of tank model and TOPMODEL. During calibration, both models exhibited equifinality, with many parameter sets equally likely to make acceptable hydrological simulations. In calibration, the tank model and TOPMODEL performances were close in terms of ‘Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency’ and ‘RMSE-observations standard deviation ratio’ indices. However, during the validation period, TOPMODEL performed much better than tank model. Owing to TOPMODEL’s better performance during model validation, it was judged to be better suited for making runoff forecasts in Atari River catchment.

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<p>Flooding of rivers is one of the major causes of soil erosion leading to significant changes in the geomorphological environment. Particularly, in countries such as Afghanistan, where the transboundary are designated according to the Amu River shorelines, are significantly affected by riverbank erosions. Amu River is driven by streamflow from the Pir Pranjal ranges of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Numerical analysis of the river flow dynamics in such regions is subject to the scarce data availability on ground stations. Thus, ERA5 Reanalysis data provides a significant means for the temporal analysis of the geomorphological changes in such multi-national watersheds.</p><p>In this study, we propose a framework to quantify the Amu riverbank erosion in the Kaldar District of the Balkh Province of Afghanistan. The proposed framework is based on establishing an empirical relationship between the riverbank erosion area based on the discharge intensity and the specific stream power. To determine these two parameters, the river discharge is modeled using the ERA5 Reanalysis hydrological parameters based on multivariate regression. The river width is determined using the Normalized Difference Water Index-based (NDWI) derived from the Landsat-7 and Landsat-8 datasets. The riverbank erosion area is determined using shoreline analysis carried out using these datasets. The shoreline analysis indicates that Afghanistan is losing precious land due to the riverbank erosion over the past two decades (2004-20) amounting to as much as 86 sq. km and on average 5.4 sq. km every year. According to the ERA5 Reanalysis data, the water contribution from snowmelt in the spring and the summer was significantly dominant compared to the precipitation, which is consistent with several other watersheds in the north-western Himalayas. The river width and the discharge are observed to follow a power-law relation with an r<sup>2 </sup>of 0.7. Additionally, the discharge intensity and the specific stream power showed significant relation (r<sup>2 </sup>of 0.84 both) corresponding to the riverbank erosion area, where the peak flood events were observed to be outliers.</p>

In Millennium Ecosystem Assessment established by the United Nations, the ecosystem services (ES) provide benefits for human life as well as the environment. There is "regulating services" among all the supporting services. As a regulatory service, forests alleviate the flood risk after heavy rain by storing rainfall temporarily into forestlands and prevent the sudden increase in river discharge. The purpose of this research is to develop a hydrological modelling to assess this service in a watershed where consists of not only forestland but also grassland. TOPMODEL is applied for the quantification. This model was invented to forecast river discharge in watersheds where the land use is uniform. However, the model has not been applied to a watershed where agricultural and forest area are mixed in Japan. This research aimed to develop TOPMODEL to apply to such complexed land use. Because the targeted watershed is consisted of two land-use types, TOPMODEL was applied in each grassland and forestland. It predicted the river discharge by combining the predicted discharge from the different types of land calculated by TOPMODEL. The result confirmed that by developing the model, it was able to assess the water discharge from the both grassland and forestland in a watershed. The developed model also showed the better reproducibility of river-discharge prediction than the conventional TOPMODEL. In addition, it clarified that the forestland stores more water than grassland into the ground. Therefore, the effect of flood control which is the regulatory service of ES was assessable through the developed model.