Comprehensive hydrologic calibration of SWAT and water balance analysis in mountainous watersheds in northwest China

Lu, Zhixiang; Zou, Songbing; Hu, Xiao; Chen, Kewei; Yin, Zhenliang; Wang, Weihua

doi:10.1016/j.pce.2014.11.003

Cited by 42 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Monthly results were generally comparable to those from other SWAT modeling studies involving mountainous watersheds (Foy et al, 2015;Lu et al, 2015;Neupane et al, 2015). Table 3 presents a summary of the model performance at the monthly timestep.…”

Section: Model Performancesupporting

confidence: 72%

“…Options for both models are identical and were selected based on previous modeling studies using SWAT in mountainous regions (Foy et al, 2015;Lu et al, 2015;Neupane et al, 2015). A modified version of the commonly applied United States Soil Conservation Service (now the NRCS) curve number (CN) procedure was adopted to simulate surface runoff in the 25 watershed.…”

Section: Model Optionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A modified version of the commonly applied United States Soil Conservation Service (now the NRCS) curve number (CN) procedure was adopted to simulate surface runoff in the 25 watershed. The CN depends on the soil type, LULC, and hydrologic condition (Lu et al, 2015). Penman-Monteith method based on energy balance components was selected to estimate potential evapotranspiration.…”

Section: Model Optionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been used to characterize and quantify the effects of LULC change, climate change, and mitigation 20 strategies on runoff, evapotranspiration, streamflow, groundwater and other hydrologic responses showing very good results in terms of model performance Motallebi et al, 2017;El-Khoury et al, 2015;Fan and Shibata, 2015;Foy et al, 2015). More specifically, numerous studies involving SWAT model development and calibration have been conducted to evaluate the hydrology in mountainous and snow-driven regions throughout the world, including this study watershed (Foy et al, 2015); Cannonsville Reservoir watershed, New York (Tolson and Shoemaker, 2007); the Little River 25 watershed, Tennessee (Zhu and Li, 2014); two Himalayan drainages of Nepal (Neupane et al, 2015); and the Yingluoxia watershed of northwest China (Lu et al, 2015). These studies document promising results for application of SWAT for hydrologic simulations in mountainous regions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing the long-term hydrologic response to wildfires in mountainous regions

Havel

Tasdighi

Arabi

2017

Preprint

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Abstract. This study aims to understand the long-term hydrologic responses to wildfires in mountainous regions at various spatial scales. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to evaluate hydrologic response of the upper Cache la Poudre watershed in Colorado to the 2012 High Park and Hewlett wildfire events. A baseline SWAT model was established 10 to simulate the hydrology of the study area between the years 2000 and 2014. The effects of wildfires on land cover were accounted for in the model using the SWAT land use update module. The wildfire effects on curve numbers were determined comparing the probability distribution of curve numbers after calibrating the model for pre and post wildfire conditions. Daily calibration and testing of the model produced "very good" results. No-wildfire and wildfire scenarios were created and compared to quantify changes in average annual total runoff volume, water budgets, and full streamflow statistics at different 15 spatial scales. At the watershed scale, wildfire conditions showed little impact on the hydrologic responses. However, a runoff increase up to 75 percent was observed between the scenarios in sub-watersheds with high burn intensity. Generally, higher surface runoff and decreased subsurface flow were observed under post-wildfire conditions. Flow-duration curves developed for burned sub-basins using full streamflow statistics showed that less frequent streamflows become greater in magnitude. A strong (R 2 > 0.8) and significant (p < 0.001) positive correlation was determined between runoff increase and 20 percentage of burned area upstream. This study showed that the effects of wildfires on hydrology of a watershed are scaledependent. Results also revealed that the wildfires had a higher effect on peak flows, which may increase the risk of flash floods in post-wildfire conditions.

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Section: Model Performancesupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Model Optionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Model Optionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing the long-term hydrologic response to wildfires in mountainous regions

Havel

Tasdighi

Arabi

2017

Preprint

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“…Water balance components include: precipitation, evapotranspiration, total runoff, surface runoff, groundwater flow and the soil water content. The quantification of the various water balance components of hydrological processes in a watershed remains a challenging topic [5][6][7][8], because several unknown components, e.g., evapotranspiration and soil water content, included in the water balance are difficult to measure [9]. However, the calculation of water balance components is significant for water resources assessment and management especially for water-scarce regions with regard to assessment of the impact of climate change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Variation in Water Balance Components in Mountainous Inland River Basin Experiencing Climate Change

Yin

Feng

Zou

et al. 2016

Water

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Abstract:Quantification of the changes of water balance components is significant for water resource assessment and management. This paper employed the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to estimate the water balance in a mountainous watershed in northwest China at different spatial scales over the past half century. The results showed that both Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and determination coefficient (R 2 ) were over 0.90 for the calibration and validation periods. The water balance components presented rising trends at the watershed scale, and the total runoff increased by 30.5% during 1964 to 2013 period. Rising surface runoff and rising groundwater flow contributed 42.7% and 57.3% of the total rising runoff, respectively. The runoff coefficient was sensitive to increasing precipitation and was not significant to the increase of temperature. The alpine meadow was the main landscape which occupied 51.1% of the watershed and contributed 55.5% of the total runoff. Grass land, forest land, bare land, and glacier covered 14.2%, 18.8%, 15.4%, and 0.5% of the watershed and contributed 8.5%, 16.9%, 15.9%, and 3.2% of the total runoff, respectively. The elevation zone from 3500 to 4500 m occupied 66.5% of the watershed area, and contributed the majority of the total runoff (70.7%). The runoff coefficients in the elevation zone from 1637 to 2800 m, 2800 to 3500 m, 3500 to 4000 m, 4000 to 4500 m, and 4500 to 5062 m were 0.20, 0.27, 0.32, 0.43, and 0.78, respectively, which tend to be larger along with the elevation increase. The quantities and change trends of the water balance components at the watershed scale were calculated by the results of the sub-watersheds. Furthermore, we characterized the spatial distribution of quantities and changes in trends of water balance components at the sub-watershed scale analysis. This study provides some references for water resource management and planning in inland river basins.

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Evaluation of corrected APHRODITE estimates for hydrological simulation in the Yarlung Tsangpo–Brahmaputra River Basin

Luo

Fan

et al. 2019

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Precipitation is one of the most important inputs for hydrological simulation because it controls water balance, and accurate representation of rainfall distribution is essential for hydrological simulation. In the Yarlung Tsangpo–Brahmaputra River Basin (YBRB), gauge‐based gridded datasets have difficulties in representing complex orographic precipitation as the rainfall stations are too sparse to capture accurate precipitation patterns. This study used Asian Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation of Water Resources (APHRODITE) estimates to drive the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model in the YBRB. Bias correction on APHRODITE estimates was achieved through linear scaling based on a denser network of gauges. In addition, the elevation bands method was implemented in SWAT to reproduce spatial precipitation by considering orographic effects. The results showed that original APHRODITE data tended to systematically underestimate rainy season precipitation with considerable underestimation on windward slopes of the Himalayas. Corrected APHRODITE data increased precipitation estimates and were able to better represent the spatial patterns of precipitation. During the calibration and validation periods, the mean monthly Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of the corrected APHRODITE‐simulation were 0.86 and 0.82, respectively, which were much higher than those of the original APHRODITE‐simulation (0.79 and 0.72), indicating the reliability of corrected APHRODITE estimates in driving hydrological model. In addition, although the elevation bands method has some limitations induced by the constant precipitation lapse rate, it was also found that this method could improve the accuracy of hydrological simulation. In large transboundary sparsely gauged river basins, implementation of bias correction and elevation bands can improve the representation of spatial precipitation of gridded gauge‐based rainfall products, which may be beneficial for hydrological simulation and water resources management.

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Comprehensive hydrologic calibration of SWAT and water balance analysis in mountainous watersheds in northwest China

Cited by 42 publications

References 43 publications

Assessing the long-term hydrologic response to wildfires in mountainous regions

Assessing the long-term hydrologic response to wildfires in mountainous regions

Assessing Variation in Water Balance Components in Mountainous Inland River Basin Experiencing Climate Change

Evaluation of corrected APHRODITE estimates for hydrological simulation in the Yarlung Tsangpo–Brahmaputra River Basin

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