A distributed runoff model for inland mountainous river basin of Northwest China

In order to predict the futuristic runoff under global warming, and to approach to the effects of vegetation on the ecological environment of the inland river mountainous watershed of Northwest China, the authors use the routine hydrometric data to create a distributed monthly model with some conceptual parameters, coupled with GIS and RS tools and data. The model takes sub-basin as the minimal confluent unit, divides the main soils of the basin into 3 layers, and identifies the vegetation types as forest and pasture. The data used in the model are precipitation, air temperature, runoff, soil weight water content, soil depth, soil bulk density, soil porosity, land cover, etc. The model holds that if the water amount is greater than the water content capacity, there will be surface runoff. The actual evaporation is proportional to the product of the potential evaporation and soil volume water content. The studied basin is Heihe mainstream mountainous basin, with a drainage area of 10,009 km 2 . The data used in this simulation are from Jan. 1980 to Dec. 1995, and the first 10 years' data are used to simulate, while the last 5 years' data are used to calibrate. For the simulation process, the Nash-Sutcliffe Equation, Balance Error and Explained Variance is 0.8681, 5.4008 and 0.8718 respectively, while for the calibration process, 0.8799, -0.5974 and 0.8800 respectively. The model results show that the futuristic runoff of Heihe river basin will increase a little. The snowmelt, glacier meltwater and the evaportranspiration will increase. The air temperature increment will make the permanent snow and glacier area diminish, and the snowline will rise. The vegetation, especially the forest in Heihe mountainous watershed, could lead to the evapotranspiration decrease of the watershed, adjust the runoff process, and increase the soil water content.

Application of snowmelt runoff model(SRM) in mountainous watersheds:A review

The snowmelt runoff model （SRM） has been widely used in simulation and forecast of streamflow in snow-dominated mountainous basins around the world. This paper presents an overall review of worldwide applications of SRM in mountainous watersheds, particularly jn data-sparse watersheds of northwestern China. Issues related to proper selection of input climate variables and parameters, and determination of the snow cover area （SCA）using remote sensing data in snowmelt runoff modeling are discussed through extensive review of literature. Preliminary applications of SRM in northwestern China have shown that the model accuracies are relatively acceptable although most of the watersheds lack measured hydro-meteorological data. Future research could explore the feasibility of modeling snowmelt runoff in data-sparse mountainous watersheds in northwestern China by utilizing snow and glacier cover remote sensing data, geographic information system （GIS） tools, field measurements, and innovative ways of model parameterization.

Application of Snow Melt Runoff Model in a Mountainous Basin of Iran

Simulation and modeling the stream flow provide major data while it is a challenge in mountainous basins with regard to the important role of snowmelt runoff as well as the data scarcity in these places. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the capability of an integrated application of remote sensing data and Snowmelt Runoff Model (SRM) to simulate scheme of daily stream flow in the snow-dominated catchment, located in the North-East region of Iran. The main parameters of the model are Snow Cover Area (SCA), temperature and participation. Regarding to the lack of measured data, the input variable and parameters of the model are extracted or estimated based on accessible maps, satellite data and available meteorological and hydrological stations. The changes of snow-cover, as spatial-temporal data, which are the most effective variable in performance of SRM, are obtained from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) eight-day composite snow cover images. The evaluation of the model application efficiency was tested by the coefficient of determination and the volume difference, which are 0.85% and -4.6% respectively. The result depicts the relative capability of SRM though it is evident that the more accurate the estimation of model parameters, the more efficient simulation results can be obtained.

Rainfall-Runoff Modeling and Hydrological Responses to the Projected Climate Change for Upper Baro Basin, Ethiopia

This paper presents the results of Rainfall-Runoff modeling and simulation of hydrological responses under changing climate using HEC-HMS model. The basin spatial data was processed by HEC-GeoHMS and imported to HEC-HMS. The calibration and validation of the HEC-HMS model was done using the observed hydrometeorological data (1989-2018) and HEC-GeoHMS output data. The goodness-of-fit of the model was measured using three performance indices: Nash and Sutcliffe coefficient (NSE) = 0.8, Coefficient of Determination (R2) = 0.8, and Percent Difference (D) = 0.03, with values showing very good performance of the model. Finally, the optimized HEC-HMS model has been applied to simulate the hydrological responses of Upper Baro Basin to the projected climate change for mid-term (2040s) and long-term (2090s) A1B emission scenarios. The simulation results have shown a mean annual percent decrease of 3.6 and an increase of 8.1 for Baro River flow in the 2040s and 2090s scenarios, respectively, compared to the baseline period (2000s). A pronounced flow variation is rather observed on a seasonal basis, reaching a reduction of 50% in spring and an increase of 50% in autumn for both mid-term and long-term scenarios with respect to the base period. Generally, the rainfall-runoff model is developed to solve, in a complementary way, the two main problems in water resources management: the lack of gauged sites and future hydrological response to climate change data of the basin and the region in general. The study results imply that seasonal and time variation in the hydrologic cycle would most likely cause hydrologic extremes. And hence, the developed model and output data are of paramount importance for adaptive strategies and sustainable water resources development in the basin.

Integration of aspect and slope in snowmelt runoff modeling in a mountain watershed

This study assessed the performances of the traditional temperature-index snowmelt runoff model(SRM) and an SRM model with a finer zonation based on aspect and slope(SRM + AS model) in a data-scarce mountain watershed in the Urumqi River Basin,in Northwest China.The proposed SRM + AS model was used to estimate the melt rate with the degree-day factor(DDF) through the division of watershed elevation zones based on aspect and slope.The simulation results of the SRM + AS model were compared with those of the traditional SRM model to identify the improvements of the SRM + AS model's performance with consideration of topographic features of the watershed.The results show that the performance of the SRM + AS model has improved slightly compared to that of the SRM model.The coefficients of determination increased from 0.73,0.69,and 0.79 with the SRM model to 0.76,0.76,and 0.81 with the SRM + AS model during the simulation and validation periods in 2005,2006,and 2007,respectively.The proposed SRM + AS model that considers aspect and slope can improve the accuracy of snowmelt runoff simulation compared to the traditional SRM model in mountain watersheds in arid regions by proper parameterization,careful input data selection,and data preparation.

Implementation of a Surface Runoff Model with Horton and Dunne Mechanisms into the Regional Climate Model RegCM_NCC

A surface runoff parameterization scheme that dynamically represents both Horton and Dunne runoff generation mechanisms within a model grid cell together with a consideration of the subgrid-scaie soil heterogeneity, is implemented into the National Climate Center regional climate model （RegCM_NCC）. The effects of the modified surface runoff scheme on RegCMANCC performance are tested with an abnormal heavy rainfall process which occurred in summer 1998. Simulated results show that the model with the original surface runoff scheme （noted as CTL） basically captures the spatial pattern of precipitation, circulation and land surface variables, but generally overestimates rainfall compared to observations. The model with the new surface runoff scheme （noted as NRM） reasonably reproduces the distribution pattern of various variables and effectively diminishes the excessive precipitation in the CTL. The processes involved in the improvement of NRM-simulated rainfall may be as follows： with the new surface runoff scheme, simulated surface runoff is larger, soil moisture and evaporation （latent heat flux） are decreased, the available water into the atmosphere is decreased; correspondingly, the atmosphere is drier and rainfall is decreased through various processes. Therefore, the implementation of the new runoff scheme into the RegCMANCC has a significant effect on results at not only the land surface, but also the overlying atmosphere.

Rainfall-runoff modeling for storm events in a coastal forest catchmen t using neural networks

The process of transformation of rainfall into runoff over a catchment is very complex and highly nonlinear and exhibits both tempor al and spatial variabilities. In this article, a rainfall-runoff model using th e artificial neural networks (ANN) is proposed for simula ting the runoff in storm events. The study uses the data from a coa stal forest catchment located in Seto Inland Sea, Japan. This article studies the accuracy of the short-term rainfall forecast obta ined by ANN time-series analysis techniques and using antecedent rainfa ll depths and stream flow as the input information. The verification results from the proposed model indicate that the approach of ANN rai nfall-runoff model presented in this paper shows a reasonable agreement in rainfall-runoff modeling with high accuracy.

Application of MODIS-Based Monthly Evapotranspiration Rates in Runoff Modeling: A Case Study in Nebraska,USA

Daily and monthly flow-rates of the Little Nemaha River in Nebraska were simulated by the lumped-parameter Jakeman-Hornberger as well as a distributed-parameter water-balance accounting procedure for the 2003-2008 and 2000-2009 periods, respectively, with and without the help of the MODIS-based monthly estimates of evapotranspiration (ET) rates. While the daily lumped-parameter model simulation accuracy remained practically unchanged with the inclusion of the monthly MODIS-based ET rates interpolated into daily values (R2 of 0.66 vs 0.68, simulated to measured runoff ratio remaining the same 96%), the monthly water-balance accounting model outcomes did improve to some extent (from an R2 of 0.67 to 0.7 with simulated to measured runoff ratio of 72% vs 115%). In both cases the models had to be slightly modified for accommodation of the ET rates as predefined input values, not present in the original model setups. These results indicate the potential practical usefulness of satellite-derived ET estimates (CREMAP values in the present case) in monthly water-balance modeling. CREMAP is a calibration-free ET estimation method based on MODIS-derived daytime surface temperature values in combination of basic climatic variables, such as air temperature, humidity and solar radiation within a Complementary Relationship framework of evaporation.

Applications of a Surface Runoff Model with Horton and Dunne Runoff for VIC

Surface runoff is mainly generated by two mechanisms, infiltration excess (Horton) runoff and saturation excess (Dunne) runoff; and the spatial variability of soil properties, antecedent soil moisture, topography, and rainfall will result in different surface runoff generation mechanisms. For a large area (e.g., a model grid size of a regional climate model or a general circulation model), these runoff generation mechanisms are commonly present at different portions of a grid cell simultaneously. Missing one of the two major runoff generation mechanisms and failing to consider spatial soil variability can result in significant under/over estimation of surface runoff which can directly introduce large errors in soil moisture states over each model grid cell. Therefore, proper modeling of surface runoff is essential to a reasonable representation of feedbacks in a land-atmosphere system. This paper presents a new surface runoff parameterization with the Philip infiltration formulation that dynamically represents both the Horton and Dunne runoff generation mechanisms within a model grid cell. The parameterization takes into account the effects of soil heterogeneity on Horton and Dunne runoff. The new parameterization is implemented into the current version of the hydrologically based Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) land surface model and tested over one watershed in Pennsylvania, USA and over the Shiguanhe Basin in the Huaihe Watershed in China. Results show that the new parameterization plays a very important role in partitioning the water budget between surface runoff and soil moisture in the atmosphere-land coupling system, and has potential applications on large hydrological simulations and land-atmospheric interactions. It is further found that the Horton runoff mechanism should be considered within the context of subgrid-scale spatial variability of soil properties and precipitation.

Effectiveness of urban distributed runoff model for discharge and water depth calculation in urban drainage pipe networks

Effective urban land-use re-planning and the strategic arrangement of drainage pipe networks can significantly enhance urban flood defense capacity.Aimed at reducing the potential risks of urban flooding,this paper presents a straightforward and efficient approach to an urban distributed runoff model(UDRM).The model is developed to quantify the discharge and water depth within urban drainage pipe networks under varying rainfall intensities and land-use scenarios.The Nash efficiency coefficient of UDRM exceeds 0.9,which indicates its high computational efficiency and potential benefit in predicting urban flooding.The prediction of drainage conditions under both current and re-planned land-use types is achieved by adopting different flood recurrence intervals.The findings reveal that the re-planned land-use strategies could effectively diminish flood risk upstream of the drainage pipe network across 20-year and 50-year flood recurrence intervals.However,in the case of extreme rainfall events(a 100-year flood recurrence),the re-planned land-use approach fell short of fulfilling the requirements necessary for flood disaster mitigation.In these instances,the adoption of larger-diameter drainage pipes becomes an essential requisite to satisfy drainage needs.Accordingly,the proposed UDRM effectively combines land-use information with pipeline data to give practical suggestions for pipeline modification and land-use optimization to combat urban floods.Therefore,this methodology warrants further promotion in the field of urban re-planning.

Application of spatially varying storage capacity model for runoff parameterization in semi-arid catchment

This paper introduces the method of designation of water storage capacity for each grid cell within a catchment, which considers topography, vegetation and soil synthetically. For the purpose of hydrological process simulation in semi-arid regions, a spatially varying storage capacity （VSC） model was developed based on the spatial distribution of water storage capacity and the vertical hybrid runoff mechanism. To verify the applicability of the VSC model, both the VSC model and a hybrid runoff model were used to simulate daily runoff processes in the catchment upstream of the Dianzi hydrological station from 1973 to 1979. The results showed that the annual average Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient was 0.80 for the VSC model, and only 0.67 for the hybrid runoff model. The higher annual average Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient of the VSC model means that this hydrological model can better simulate daily runoff processes in semi-arid regions. Furthermore, as a distributed hydrological model, the VSC model can be applied in regional water resource management.

A test of Snowmelt Runoff Model(SRM)for the Gongnaisi River basin in the western Tianshan Mountains,China

The Snowmelt Runoff Model (SRM) is one of a very few models in the world today that requires remote sensing derived snow cover as model input. Owing to its simple data requirements and use of remote sensing to provide snow cover information, SRM is ideal for use in data sparse regions, particularly in remote and inaccessible high mountain watersheds. In order to verify the applicability of SRM in an environment of continental climate, a test of SRM is performed for the Gongnaisi River basin in the western Tianshan Mountains, the results show that two SRM average goodness-of-fit statistics for simulations, Nash-Sutcliff coefficient (R2) and volume difference (DV), are 0.87 and 0.90%, respectively. As compared with the application results over 80 basins in 25 different countries around the world, SRM performs well in the Gongnaisi River basin. The results also show that SRM can be a validated snowmelt runoff model capable of being applied in the western Tianshan Mountains. On the basis of snowmelt runoff simulation, together with a set of simplified hypothetical climate scenarios, SRM is also used to simulate the effects of climate change on snow cover and the consecutive snowmelt runoff. For a given hypothetical temperature increase of 4℃, the snow coverage and snowmelt season shift towards earlier dates, and the snowmelt runoff, as a result, is changed significantly at the same time. The simulation results show that the snow cover is sensitive to changes of climate, especially to the increase of temperature, the major effect of climate change will be a time shifting of snowmelt runoff to early spring months, resulting in a redistribution of seasonally runoff throughout the whole snowmelt season.

Validating the Runoff from the PRECIS Model Using a Large-Scale Routing Model

The streamflow over the Yellow River basin is simulated using the PRECIS （Providing REgional Climates for Impacts Studies） regional climate model driven by 15-year （1979-1993） ECMWF reanalysis data as the initial and lateral boundary conditions and an off-line large-scale routing model （LRM）. The LRM uses physical catchment and river channel information and allows streamflow to be predicted for large continental rivers with a 1°×1° spatial resolution. The results show that the PRECIS model can reproduce the general southeast to northwest gradient distribution of the precipitation over the Yellow River basin, The PRECIS- LRM model combination has the capability to simulate the seasonal and annual streamflow over the Yellow River basin. The simulated streamflow is generally coincident with the naturalized streamflow both in timing and in magnitude.

Discharge Water Quality Models of Storm Runoff in a Catchment

The relationships between the water qualities of nitrogen and phosphorous contents in the discharge water and the discharge of storm runoff of an experimental catchment including terraced paddy field are analyzed based on experiment results of the catchment. By summarizing the currently related research on water quality models, the water quality models of different components of storm runoff of the catchment are presented and verified with the experiment data of water quality analyses and the corresponding discharge of the storm runoffs during 3 storms. Through estimating the specific discharge of storm runoff, the specific load of different components of nitrogen and phosphorus in the discharge water of the catchment can be forecasted by the models. It is found that the mathematical methods of linear regression are very useful for analysis of the relationship between the concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus and the water discharge of storm runoff. It is also found that the most content of the nitrogen (75%) in the discharge water is organic, while half of the content (49%) of phosphorus in the discharge water is inorganic.

SWAT Model Application to Assess the Impact of Intensive Corn-farming on Runoff, Sediments and Phosphorous loss from an Agricultural Watershed in Wisconsin

The potential future increase in corn-based biofuel may be expected to have a negative impact on water quality in streams and lakes of the Midwestern US due to increased agricultural chemicals usage. This study used the SWAT model to assess the impact of continuous-corn farming on sediment and phosphorus loading in Upper Rock River watershed in Wisconsin. It was assumed that farmers in the area where corn was rotated with soybean would progressively skip soybean for continuous corn as corn became more profitable. Simulations using SWAT indicated that conversion of corn-soybean to corn-corn-soybean would cause 11% and 2% increase in sediment yield and TP loss, respectively. The conversion of corn-soybean to continuous corn caused 55% and 35% increase in sediment yield and TP loss, respectively. However, this increase could be mitigated by applying various BMPs and/or conservation practices such as conservation tillage, fertilizer management and vegetative buffer strips. The conversion to continuous corn tilled with conservation tillage reduced sediment yield by 2% and did not change TP loss. Increase in P fertilizer amount was roughly proportional to increase in TP loss and 11% more TP was lost when fertilizer was applied four months before planting. Vegetative buffer strips, 15 to 30 m wide, around corn farms reduced sediment yield by 51 to 70% and TP loss by 41 to 63%.

Development of a Cell-based Model to Derive Direct Runoff Hydrographs for Ungauged Mountainous Basins

A model to derive direct runoff hydrograph for an ungauged basin using the physical properties of the basin is presented. The basin is divided into grid cells and canal elements. Overland flow is generated from each grid cell of the basin by application of continuous effective rainfall of I mm/hr to the basin, The flow generated is routed through downstream grid cells and the canal elements using the kinematic wave approach. The travel time for direct runoff from each grid cell to the basin outlet is calculated and the S-curve is derived for the basin. The S-curve is used to derive the unit hydrograph of a given duration for the basin. The model, referred as Cell-basin model was applied to the Upper Kotmale Basin in Sri Lanka and the model predictions of direct runoff hydrographs for rainfall events agreed with the observations to a reasonable accuracy. Comparison of the unit hydrographs obtained from the model and from the conventional Snyder＇s synthetic unit hydrograph using regionalized parameters assuming the basin as an ungauged basin, with the unit hydrograph derived from the observations showed that the model predicted unit hydrograph was more suitable than that obtained by Snyder＇s method for Sri Lankan up country basins. Thus, the present model is a useful tool to obtain direct runoff hydrograph for ungauged basins.

Modeling Urban Hydrology: A Comparison of New Urbanist and Traditional Neighborhood Design Surface Runoff

Urban development generally leads to an increase in impervious cover resulting in a greater volume of surface runoff following storm activity. However, the type of urban development in place strongly controls the degree of impervious cover generated. Traditional neighborhood designs focus on a medium-to-low urban density spread over larger areas, while new urbanist neighborhood designs incorporate more diversity by increasing urban density across smaller areas. The purpose of this study is to model and compare the potential surface runoff for two urban neighborhoods in Austin, Texas-Circle C Ranch, a traditional neighborhood design, and Mueller, a new urbanist development for a 10-year 24-hour storm scenario. Potential surface runoff was calculated by layering various geospatial datasets representing the physical characteristics of both study sites within the Watershed Modeling System (WMS) to configure the HEC-HMS runoff model. Results initially imply that the higher density new urbanist neighborhood significantly increases total and peak storm runoff compared to the traditional neighborhood. However, a greater number of residential units are available at Mueller over the same area as Circle C Ranch. When taking this into account the increased potential surface runoff is negated at the new urbanist site. Although new urbanist neighborhoods will usually contain more residential units than traditional developments when compared at the same scale, the higher urban density associated with these neighborhoods demand the development of more effective stormwater retention systems to cope with a potential increase in surface runoff.

Runoff Simulation of Shitoukoumen Reservoir Basin Based on SWAT Model

[Objective] The study aimed to simulate the runoff of Shitoukoumen Reservoir basin by using SWAT model. [Method] Based on DEM elevation, land use type, soil type and hydrometeorological data, SWAT model, a distributed hydrological model was established to simulate the monthly runoff of Shitoukoumen Reservoir basin, and the years 2006 and 2010 were chosen as the calibration and validation period respectively. [Result] The simulation results indicated that SWAT model could be used to simulate the runoff of Shitoukoumen Reservoir basin, and the simulation effect was good. However, the response of the model to local rainstorm was not obvious, so that the actual runoff in June and July of 2010 was abnormally higher than the simulation value. [Conclusion] The research could provide theoretical references for the plan and management of water resources in Shitoukoumen Reservoir basin in future.

A Diffusion Wave Based Integrated FEM-GIS Model for Runoff Simulation of Small Watersheds

In this paper, an integrated model based on Finite Element Method (FEM) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has been presented for the runoff simulation of small watersheds. Interception is estimated by an exponential model based on Leaf Area Index (LAI). Philip two term model has been used for the estima-tion of infiltration in the watershed. For runoff estimation, diffusion wave equations solved by FEM are used. Interflow has been simulated using FEM based model. The developed integrated model has been applied to Peacheater Creek watershed in USA. Sensitivity analysis of the model has been carried out for various pa-rameters. From the results, it is seen that the model is able to simulate the hydrographs with reasonable ac-curacy. The presented model is useful for runoff estimation in small watersheds.