A Review of SWAT Model Application in Africa

Abstract

The soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) is a well-known hydrological modeling tool that has been applied in various hydrologic and environmental simulations. A total of 206 studies over a 15-year period (2005–2019) were identified from various peer-reviewed scientific journals listed on the SWAT website database, which is supported by the Centre for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD). These studies were categorized into five areas, namely applications considering: water resources and streamflow, erosion and sedimentation, land-use management and agricultural-related contexts, climate-change contexts, and model parameterization and dataset inputs. Water resources studies were applied to understand hydrological processes and responses in various river basins. Land-use and agriculture-related context studies mainly analyzed impacts and mitigation measures on the environment and provided insights into better environmental management. Erosion and sedimentation studies using the SWAT model were done to quantify sediment yield and evaluate soil conservation measures. Climate-change context studies mainly demonstrated streamflow sensitivity to weather changes. The model parameterization studies highlighted parameter selection in streamflow analysis, model improvements, and basin scale calibrations. Dataset inputs mainly compared simulations with rain-gauge and global rainfall data sources. The challenges and advantages of the SWAT model’s applications, which range from data availability and prediction uncertainties to the model’s capability in various applications, are highlighted. Discussions on considerations for future simulations such as data sharing, and potential for better future analysis are also highlighted. Increased efforts in local data availability and a multidimensional approach in future simulations are recommended.

Impacts and Implications of Land Use Land Cover Dynamics on Groundwater Recharge and Surface Runoff in East African Watershed

“…The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) [42] is a vigorous hydrologic model to estimate hydrologic fluxes in combating water scarcity issues [43][44][45][46]. The model integrates multiple ecological processes supporting management and decision-making scenarios worldwide [39,41,[47][48][49][50][51][52][53].…”

The Runoff in the Upper Taohe River Basin and Its Responses to Climate Change

“…It has been applied to analyze soil water conservation structures and their impacts on reducing runoff. The SWAT model has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool when selecting the most technically effective management strategies to reduce soil degradation [36].…”

How Climate Extremes Influence Conceptual Rainfall-Runoff Model Performance and Uncertainty

“…SWAT (Arnold et al, 1998), a common conceptual rainfallrunoff model, has been used as a predictive tool to assess the impact of different climate change projections on the future water resource availability in different African settings (Akoko et al, 2021;Chomba et al, 2021;Maviza and Ahmed, 2021;Osman et al, 2021). Using historical conditions, hydrological process simulations for rainfall-runoff models have been calibrated with historical streamflow measurements and other hydroclimatic observations.…”