A review of regionalisation for continuous streamflow simulation

He, Yi; Bàrdossy, András; Zehe, Erwin

doi:10.5194/hess-15-3539-2011

Cited by 196 publications

(162 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…As these uncertainties often vary in space, globally uniform parameter values diminish overfitting uncertainties. In addition, calibration for several independent grids is computationally demanding and subsequently requires a parameter regionalization approach (He et al, 2011). Since such approaches are not commonly accepted (Sood and Smakhtin, 2015;Bierkens et al, 2015), macro-scale models mostly apply a priori parameters based on empirical values or on expert knowledge, which may yet lead to suboptimal simulations (Beck et al, 2016;Sood and Smakhtin, 2015).…”

Section: Model Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding terrestrial water storage variations in northern latitudes across scales

Trautmann

Koirala

Eicker

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The GRACE satellites provide signals of total terrestrial water storage (TWS) variations over large spatial domains at seasonal to inter-annual timescales. While the GRACE data have been extensively and successfully used to assess spatio-temporal changes in TWS, little effort has been made to quantify the relative contributions of snowpacks, soil moisture, and other components to the integrated TWS signal across northern latitudes, which is essential to gain a better insight into the underlying hydrological processes. Therefore, this study aims to assess which storage component dominates the spatio-temporal patterns of TWS variations in the humid regions of northern mid-to high latitudes.To do so, we constrained a rather parsimonious hydrological model with multiple state-of-the-art Earth observation products including GRACE TWS anomalies, estimates of snow water equivalent, evapotranspiration fluxes, and gridded runoff estimates. The optimized model demonstrates good agreement with observed hydrological spatio-temporal patterns and was used to assess the relative contributions of solid (snowpack) versus liquid (soil moisture, retained water) storage components to total TWS variations. In particular, we analysed whether the same storage component dominates TWS variations at seasonal and inter-annual temporal scales, and whether the dominating component is consistent across small to large spatial scales.Consistent with previous studies, we show that snow dynamics control seasonal TWS variations across all spatial scales in the northern mid-to high latitudes. In contrast, we find that inter-annual variations of TWS are dominated by liquid water storages at all spatial scales. The relative contribution of snow to inter-annual TWS variations, though, increases when the spatial domain over which the storages are averaged becomes larger. This is due to a stronger spatial coherence of snow dynamics that are mainly driven by temperature, as opposed to spatially more heterogeneous liquid water anomalies, that cancel out when averaged over a larger spatial domain. The findings first highlight the effectiveness of our model-data fusion approach that jointly interprets multiple Earth observation data streams with a simple model. Secondly, they reveal that the determinants of TWS variations in snow-affected northern latitudes are scale-dependent. In particular, they seem to be not merely driven by snow variability, but rather are determined by liquid water storages on interannual timescales. We conclude that inferred driving mechanisms of TWS cannot simply be transferred from one scale to another, which is of particular relevance for understanding the short-and long-term variability of water resources.

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Section: Model Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding terrestrial water storage variations in northern latitudes across scales

Trautmann

Koirala

Eicker

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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show abstract

“…Therefore a regionalisation strategy was necessary to transfer calibrated parameter values across the entire VOB. We used the hydrological distance approach (He et al, 2011), in which hydrological similarity was evaluated based on a set of climatic-physiographic properties of the donor and target catchments. This approach was evaluated by validating the model at two most downstream gauging stations on the two investigated rivers.…”

Section: Model Inputs and Calibration Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural streamflow simulation for two largest river basins in Poland: a baseline for identification of flow alterations

Piniewski

2016

Proc. IAHS

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Abstract. The objective of this study was to apply a previously developed large-scale and high-resolution SWAT model of the Vistula and the Odra basins, calibrated with the focus of natural flow simulation, in order to assess the impact of three different dam reservoirs on streamflow using the Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA). A tailored spatial calibration approach was designed, in which calibration was focused on a large set of relatively small non-nested sub-catchments with semi-natural flow regime. These were classified into calibration clusters based on the flow statistics similarity. After performing calibration and validation that gave overall positive results, the calibrated parameter values were transferred to the remaining part of the basins using an approach based on hydrological similarity of donor and target catchments. The calibrated model was applied in three case studies with the purpose of assessing the effect of dam reservoirs (Włocławek, Siemianówka and Czorsztyn Reservoirs) on streamflow alteration. Both the assessment based on gauged streamflow (Before-After design) and the one based on simulated natural streamflow showed large alterations in selected flow statistics related to magnitude, duration, high and low flow pulses and rate of change. Some benefits of using a large-scale and highresolution hydrological model for the assessment of streamflow alteration include: (1) providing an alternative or complementary approach to the classical Before-After designs, (2) isolating the climate variability effect from the dam (or any other source of alteration) effect, (3) providing a practical tool that can be applied at a range of spatial scales over large area such as a country, in a uniform way. Thus, presented approach can be applied for designing more natural flow regimes, which is crucial for river and floodplain ecosystem restoration in the context of the European Union's policy on environmental flows.

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“…Hence, dependency of the regionalization on the performance measures is also an additional challenge in the regionalization endeavors, which needs consideration. Further references on regionalization works can be found from review papers by He et al (2011), Razavi and Coulibaly (2013) and Hrachowitz et al (2013), and the synthesis by Parajka et al (2013).…”

Section: Factors That Influence Regionalization Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of Regionalization Methods for Hourly Continuous Streamflow Simulation Using Distributed Models in Boreal Catchments

et al. 2015

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Regionalization for prediction in ungauged basins at hourly resolution is important for water resources management (e.g. floods and hydropeaking). In this paper, calibration of 26 catchments (39-3090 km 2 ) in mid-Norway was performed using hourly records and three spatially distributed (1x1 km 2 ) precipitation-runoff models: a first-order nonlinear system model (hereafter Kirchmod), the HBV model and the Basic-Grid-Model (BGM). Four regionalization methods for each model namely parameter set yielding maximum regional weighted average (MRWA) performance measures (PM), regional median of optimal parameters (RMedP), nearest neighbor (NN) and physical similarity (PS) were evaluated and compared with three benchmarks. Parameter transfer from best regional donor (BRD) and from an ideal best arbitrary single-donor (BASD), and local calibration (LC) were as benchmarks. The physical similarity attributes include hypsometric curves (PSH), land use (PSL), drainage density (PSD), catchment area (PSA), terrain slope (PSS), bedrock geology (PSR), soil type (PSSO) and combination of all (PSC).Comprehensive evaluation of single-and multi-donors, simple benchmarks and more advanced regionalization methods using multi-models, two PM and their statistical evaluation indicate that the identification of regionalization methods is dependent on the models, the PM and their statistical evaluation. In general, the PSH, PSC and BRD methods performed better for the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) based on boxplots and regional median values of both the NSE and relative deterioration or improvement of the NSE from the local calibration due to the regionalization. The methods also performed better for the individual catchments. The PSS, RMedP, MRWA and BRD methods performed better for the log-transformed streamflow 2 (NSEln) based on the same evaluation criteria. Similar performance to the more advanced regionalization methods of transfer of homogeneous parameter sets across the whole region from the BRD for both NSE and NSEln indicate the potential of the simple regionalization approach for predicting runoff response in the region.

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A review of regionalisation for continuous streamflow simulation

Cited by 196 publications

References 79 publications

Understanding terrestrial water storage variations in northern latitudes across scales

Understanding terrestrial water storage variations in northern latitudes across scales

Natural streamflow simulation for two largest river basins in Poland: a baseline for identification of flow alterations

Evaluation of Regionalization Methods for Hourly Continuous Streamflow Simulation Using Distributed Models in Boreal Catchments

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