Hydrological Process Simulation of Inland River Watershed: A Case Study of the Heihe River Basin with Multiple Hydrological Models

Abstract

Simulating the hydrological processes of an inland river basin can help provide the scientific guidance to the policies of water allocation among different subbasins and water resource management groups within the subbasins. However, it is difficult to simulate the hydrological processes of an inland river basin with hydrological models due to the non-consistent hydrological characteristics of the entire basin. This study presents a solution to this problem with a case study about the hydrological process simulation in an inland river basin in China, Heihe River basin. It is divided into the upper, middle, and lower reaches based on the distinctive hydrological characteristics in the Heihe River basin, and three hydrological models are selected, applied, and tested to simulate the hydrological cycling processes for each reach. The upper reach is the contributing area with the complex runoff generation processes, therefore, the hydrological informatic modeling system (HIMS) is utilized due to its combined runoff generation mechanisms. The middle reach has strong impacts of intensive human activities on the interactions of surface and subsurface flows, so a conceptual water balance model is applied to simulate the water balance process. For the lower reach, as the dissipative area with groundwater dominating the hydrological process, a groundwater modeling system with the embedment of MODFLOW model is applied to simulate the groundwater dynamics. Statistical parameters and water balance analysis prove that the three models have excellent performances in simulating the hydrological process of the three reaches. Therefore, it is an effective way to simulate the hydrological process of inland river basin with multiple hydrological models according to the characteristics of each subbasin.

Temporal and spatial variability in snow cover over the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China, from 2001 to 2015

“…China Meteorological Assimilation Driving Datasets for the SWAT model (CMADS) covering the period from January 1, 2011, to December 31, 2014, were also obtained. Employing Chinese land data assimilation system (CLDAS) technology, the CMADS datasets provide coverage for all of East Asia and are established by multiple methods, including loop nesting, resampling, pattern estimation and bilinear interpolation, which ensure the applicable accuracy (Wang et al, 2018). In this study, snow depth data from 93 weather stations were utilized to assess the cloud removal precision, and the relationship between climate and snow cover between 2001 and 2014 was analysed based on CMADS meteorological data.…”

Hydrological evaluation of open-access precipitation data using SWAT at multiple temporal and spatial scales

“…Hence, this study aims to elucidate these unknowns. More impor-tantly, hydrologic models are expected to describe internal hydrologic processes and subsequently present a unique interpretation of the water balance components (Pellicer-Martínez et al, 2015;Tanner and Hughes, 2015;Wang et al, 2018); yet very limited studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of temporal and spatial resolution on hydrologic processes or water balance components. Thus, this fundamental issue must be addressed before hydrologic modeling with open-access precipitation datasets can be utilized at maximum capacity; as without a thorough understanding of the water cycle's inner processes, the hydrologic models may be highly misleading and facilitate inappropriate management decisions.…”

Nitrogen rather than streamflow regulates the growth of riparian trees

“…1). It goes through semi-arid, arid, and extremely arid areas, and consequencely, it has been divided into three reaches with two valleys: Yingluoxia valley and Zhengyixia valley (Wang et al, 2018).…”

“…The upper reach of the Heihe River basin (HRB) is covered by mountainous forests, shrub and grasslands, and provides nearly 70.0% of the total streamflow, which supplies irrigation water for agriculture in the middle and lower reaches (Niu et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2018). The middle reaches is the water consumptive area of the entire Heihe River, as about 92.8% oases agriculture and concentrate in the middle reaches of the Heihe River and consume about 86.9% of the water resources (Niu et al, 2018).…”