Sediment Transport Estimation From Hydrological and Autoregressive Models

Abstract

Hydrologic modeling allows the simulation of runoff and sediment processes, which are applied in integrated watershed management, soil and water nutrients, among others. However, these models require considerable amounts of input data. Sediment data is often lacking in quantity and quality, which leads to uncertainty in hydrological models. The objective of the present study was to propose a methodological alternative based on sediment time series in the Santa Cruz de Aquismón sub-basin, San Luis Potosí, Mexico, by means of autoregressive integrated moving average models (ARIMA) and the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. The SWAT model was calibrated and validated with measured flows from the National Surface Water Data Bank (BANDAS) of station 26 241 (Ballesmi). Model calibration and validation performance was assessed with Nash-Sutcliffe Coefficient (NSE), percent bias (PBIAS), and the root mean squared error (RMSE). The SWAT model fit was rated as very good. The hydrologic model results were compared to the daily sediment estimates from three months in 1985 (June, September, and November) obtained from ARIMA models. The mean absolute percent error (MAPE) was 0.571, 0.168, and 0.029, respectively. The results indicated that the use of the ARIMA model for sediment estimation is useful when there are short time series with limited information, since it allows the completion of missing data series or short-term estimates.