Distributed hydrological models for addressing effects of spatial variability of roughness on overland flow

In this study, we investigated the origin of the overland flow roughness problem and divided the current overland flow roughness research into three types, as follows: the first type of research takes into account the effects of roughness on the volume and velocity of surface runoff, flood peaks, and the scouring capability of flows, but has not addressed the spatial variability of roughness in detail; the second type of research considers that surface roughness varies spatially with different land usage types, land-cover conditions, and different tillage forms, but lacks a quantitative study of the spatial variability; and the third type of research simply deals with the spatial variability of roughness in each grid cell or land type. We present three shortcomings of the current overland flow roughness research, including(1) the neglect of roughness in distributed hydrological models when simulating the overland flow direction and distribution,(2) the lack of consideration of spatial variability of roughness in hydrological models, and(3) the failure to distinguish the roughness formulas in different overland flow regimes. To solve these problems,distributed hydrological model research should focus on four aspects in regard to overland flow: velocity field observations, flow regime mechanisms, a basic roughness theory, and scale problems.

Applying the Distributed Hydrological Model for Tropical Monsoon Basins by Using Earth Observation Data (Case Studies: Kone and Ba River Basins)

Due to the limitation of data sources, the application of Distributed Hydrological Models (DHMs) using earth observation data to research water resources is necessary. In this study, the BTOPMC (Block-wise use of TOPMODEL) model was applied for 2 basins in the tropical monsoon region. This is the first time that the land cover map of the CCI (Climate Change Initiative Land Cover Team) was prepared for input data instead of IGBP (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme) land cover map as proposed in the demo version of the BTOPMC model. The calibration and validation results showed that the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficients for daily stream discharge were 77.5% and 68.7% at Cung Son station (Ba basin). The Nash-Sutcliffe coefficients for daily stream discharge were 79.4% and 69.0% at Binh Tuong station (Kone basin), respectively. Because of a stop in measuring the discharge at Binh Tuong station in 2007, this model was applied to simulate discharge during the period of 2008-2015. Furthermore, the effect of land cover on discharge at Cung Son station was considered. The annual discharge in 2010 at Cung Son decreased 8 m3/s in the comparison between two scenarios (land cover of 2000 and 2010). According to this result, it is possible to propose a wide application range of the DHMs model to the tropical monsoon river basins using earth observation data.

Weather Radar Data and Distributed Hydrological Modelling: An Application for Mexico Valley

The frequent occurrence of exceptionally very heavy rainfall in Mexico during the summer causes flash floods in many areas and major economic losses. As a consequence, a significant part of the annual government budget is diverted to the reconstruction of the disasters caused by floods every year, resulting hold up in the country development. A key element to mitigate the flash flood hazards is the implementation of an early warning system with the ability to process the necessary information in the shortest possible time, in order to?increase structural and non-structural resilience in flood prone regions. The real-time estimation of rainfall is essential for the implementation of such systems and the use of remote sensing instruments that feed the operational rainfall-runoff hydrological models is becoming of increasing importance worldwide. However, in some countries such as Mexico, the application of such technology for operational purposes is still in its infancy. Here the implementation of an operational hydrological model is described for the Mixcoac river basin as part of the non-structural measures that can be applied for intense precipitation events. The main goal is to examine the feasibility of the use of remote sensing instruments and establish a methodology to predict the runoff in real time in urban river basins with complex topography, to increase the resilience of the areas affected by annual floods. The study takes data from weather radar operated by the National Meteorological Service of Mexico, as input to a distributed hydrological model. The distributed unit hydrograph model methodology is used in order to assess its feasibility in urban experimental basin. The basic concepts underlying the model, as well as calibration and validation are discussed. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using weather radar data for modeling rainfall-runoff process with distributed parameter models for urban watersheds. A product resulting from this study was the development of software Runoff Forecast Model (ASM), for application in distributed hydrological models with rainfall data in real time in watersheds with complex terrain, which are usually found in Mexico.

Development and Application of a Distributed Conceptual Hydrological Model to Simulate Runoff in the Be River Basin and the Water Transfer Capacity to the Saigon River Basin,Vietnam

A distributed conceptual model(FRASC(Flow Routed Accumulation Simulation in a Catchment))has been developed,in which a rainfall-runoff module is modified from an original lumped conceptual model(Xinanjiang)via a GIS(Geographic Information System)-aided approach and a water allocation module contains reservoirs,water users and hydropower plants.The model is relatively easy to use and can easily obtain input data,but still has the ability to generate hydrological information at many points within a catchment.The model application to the Be River basin is evaluated and shows to be reliable in terms of close agreements between simulated and observed series.Daily natural flow rates for 36 years are simulated at 7,981 grid cells within a studied area of 7,650 km^2.Based on this simulated database,design discharges are predicted in various probabilities.Finally,the research determines that the water transfer capacity from the Be River basin to the Saigon River basin reaches 14%,18% and 23% of a planned value of 75 m^3/s during the dry period in a wet year(P10%),average year(P50%)and dry year(P90%),respectively.

Hydrological Modelling of Sidi Jabeur Watershed (Morocco) Using Spatially Distributed Model ATHYS

The objective of this study is to model the hydrology in the Sidi Jabeur basin, located in Bouregreg watershed at the north-central of Morocco, using the spatially distributed model (ATHYS) in order to understand and determine the different watershed hydrological processes. The study requires the collection of a series of data as inputs models namely rainfall data, water quantity, soil occupation, digital terrain model and requires also a calibration in order to evaluate the model in validation phase. The simulation results are obtained from the validation phase aim to replicate the operation of Sidi Jabeur watershed, and present a suitable adjustment perspective of the observed hydrograph. These results show that the objective is achieved and a model distributed like ATHYS plays an effective role in improving the efficiency and presents a high advantage in anticipation of runoff volume.

Adistributedeco-hydrologicalmodelanditsapplication

Eco-hydrological processes in arid areas are the focus of many hydrological and water resources studies. However, the hydrological cycle and the ecological system have usually been considered separately in most previous studies, and the correlation between the two has not been fully understood. Interdisciplinary research on eco-hydrological processes using multidisciplinary knowledge has been insufficient. In order to quantitatively analyze and evaluate the interaction between the ecosystem and the hydrological cycle, a new kind of eco-hydrological model, the ecology module for a grid-based integrated surface and groundwater model(Eco-GISMOD), is proposed with a two-way coupling approach,which combines the ecological model(EPIC) and hydrological model(GISMOD) by considering water exchange in the soil layer. Water interaction between different soil layers is simply described through a generalized physical process in various situations. A special method was used to simulate the water exchange between plants and the soil layer, taking into account precipitation, evapotranspiration, infiltration, soil water replenishment, and root water uptake. In order to evaluate the system performance, the Heihe River Basin in northwestern China was selected for a case study. The results show that forests and crops were generally growing well with sufficient water supply, but water shortages,especially in the summer, inhibited the growth of grass and caused grass degradation. This demonstrates that water requirements and water consumption for different kinds of vegetation can be estimated by considering the water-supply rules of Eco-GISMOD, which will be helpful for the planning and management of water resources in the future.

Application of Developed Grid-GA Distributed Hydrologic Model in Semi-Humid and Semi-Arid Basin

A grid and Green-Ampt based （Grid-GA）distributed hydrologic physical model was developed for flood simulation and forecasting in semi-humid and semi-arid basin. Based on topographical information of each grid cell extracted fi＇om the digital elevation model （DEM） and Green-Ampt infiltration method, the Grid-GA model takes into consideration the redistribution of water content, and consists of vegetation and root interception, evapotranspiration, runoff generation via the excess infiltration mechanism, runoff concentration, and flow routing. The downslope redis- tribution of soil moisture is explicitly calculated on a grid basis, and water exchange among grids within runoff routing along the river drainage networks is taken into consideration. The proposed model and Xin＇anjiang model were ap- plied to the upper Lushi basin in the Luohe River, a tributary of the Yellow River, with an area of 4 716 km2 for flood simulation. Results show that both models perform well in flood simulation and can be used for flood forecasting in semi-humid and semi-arid region.

Efficiency and Feasibility of an Integrated Algorithm for Distributed Hydrological M odel Calibration

Increasing complexity of distributed hydrological model （DHM） has lowered the efficiency of convergence.In this study,global sensitivity analysis （SA） was introduced by combining multiobjective （MO） optimization for DHM calibration.Latin Hypercube-once at a time （LH-OAT） was adopted in global parameter SA to obtain relative sensitivity of model parameter,which can be categorized into different sensitivity levels.Two comparative study cases were conducted to present the efficiency and feasibility by combining SA with MO（SA-MO）.WetSpa model with non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-Ⅱ （NSGA-Ⅱ） algorithm and EasyDHM model with multi-objective sequential complex evolutionary metropolis-uncertainty analysis （MOSCEM-UA）algorithm were adopted to demonstrate the general feasibility of combining SA in optimization.Results showed that the LH-OAT was globally effective in selecting high sensitivity parameters.It proves that using parameter from high sensitivity groups results in higher convergence efficiency.Study case Ⅰ showed a better Pareto front distribution and convergence compared with model calibration without SA.Study case Ⅱ indicated a more efficient convergence of parameters in sequential evolution of MOSCEM-UA under the same iteration.It indicates that SA-MO is feasible and efficient for high dimensional DHM calibration.

Hydrological characteristics and changes in the Nu-Salween River basin revealed with model-based reconstructed data

The Nu-Salween River(NSR),the longest free-flow river in Southeast Asia,plays an irreplaceable role in social development and ecological protection.The lower NSR region is particularly valuable as it is inhabited by approximately 6.7 million people.The basin has limited hydraulic conservancy infrastructure and insufficient ability to cope with climate change risks.Studying the hydrological characteristics and changes in the basin provides the scientific basis for rational protection and development of the basin.However,owing to the limitation of observation data,previous studies have focused on the local area and neglected the study of the lower reaches,which is not enough to reflect the spatial characteristics of the entire basin.In this study,the ECMWF 5th generation reanalysis data(ERA5)and Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation(MSWEP)were applied to develop a geomorphology-based hydrological model(GBHM)for reconstructing hydrological datasets(i.e.GBHM-ERA5 and GBHM-MSWEP).The reconstructed datasets covering the complete basin were verified against the gauge observation and compared with other commonly used streamflow products,including Global Flood Awareness System v2.1,GloFAS-Reanalysis dataset v3.0,and linear optimal runoff aggregate(LORA).The comparison results revealed that GBHM-ERA5 is significantly better than the other four datasets and provides a good reproduction of the hydrological characteristics and trends of the NSR.Detailed analysis of GBHM-ERA5 revealed that:(1)A multi-year mean surface runoff represented 39%of precipitation over the basin during 1980–2018,which had low surface runoff in the upstream,while areas around the Three Parallel Rivers Area and the estuary had abundant surface runoff.(2)The surface runoff and discharge coefficient of variations in spring were larger than those in other seasons,and the inter-annual variation in the downstream was smaller than that in the upstream and midstream regions.(3)More than 70%of the basin areas showed a decreasing trend in the surface runoff,except for parts of Nagqu,south of Shan State in Myanmar,and Thailand,where surface runoff has an increasing trend.(4)The downstream discharge has dropped significantly at a rate of approximately 680 million cubic metresper year,and the decline rate is greater than that of upstream and midstream,especially in summer.This study provides a data basis for subsequent studies in the NSR basin and further elucidates the impact of climate change on the basin,which is beneficial to river planning and promotes international cooperation on the water-and eco-security of the basin.

Hydrological Modeling of Aguibat Ezziar Watershed (Morocco), Comparative Study of Two Different Hydrological Models

This study aims to compare the performance of two hydrological models, conceptual (HEC-HMS) and spatial (ATHYS) on the Aguibat Ezziar watershed. The comparative analysis is based on the performances of simulation in terms of Nash-Sutcliffe and RSR. The study requires the collection of a series of data as inputs models namely rainfall data, water quantity, soil occupation, DTM and requires also a calibration in order to evaluate these models in validation phase. The simulation results were obtained from the validation phase aiming to replicate the operation of watershed Aguibat Ezziar, and present a suitable adjustment perspective of the observed hydrograph. These results show that the objective is achieved and a model distributed like ATHYS plays an effective role to improve the efficiency and present a high advantage in anticipation of runoff volume comparing with other models.

Hydrological behaviour and water balance analysis for Xitiaoxi catchment of Taihu Basin

With the rapid social and economic development of the Taihu region, Taihu Lake now faces an increasingly severe eutrophication problem. Pollution from surrounding catchments contributes greatly to the eutrophication of water bodies in the region. Investigation of surface flow and associated mass transport for the Xitiaoxi catchment is of a significant degree of importance as the Xitiaoxi catchment is one of the major catchments within the Taihu region. A SWAT-based distributed hydrological model was established for the Xitiaoxi catchment. The model was calibrated and verified using hydrometeorological data from 1988 to 2001. The results indicate that the modeled daily and annual stream flow match the observed data both in the calibration period and the verification period, with a linear regression coefficient R2 and a coefficient e for modeled daily stream flow greater than 0.8 at Hengtangcun and Fanjiacun gauge stations. The results show that the runoff process in the Xitiaoxi catchment is affected both by rainfall and human activities （e.g., reservoirs and polder areas）. Moreover, the human activities weaken flood peaks more noticeably during rainstorms. The Water balance analysis reveals the percentages of precipitation made up by surface flow, evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge＇ and the change of soil storage, all of which are considered useful to the further understanding of the hydrological processes in the Xitiaoxi catchment. This study provides a good base for further studies in mass transport modeling and comparison of modeling results from similar hydrological models.

Discretization Approach in Integrated Hydrologic Model for Surface and Groundwater Interaction

The commonly used discretization approaches for distributed hydrological models can be broadly categorized into four types,based on the nature of the discrete components:Regular Mesh,Triangular Irregular Networks(TINs),Representative Elementary Watershed(REWs) and Hydrologic Response Units(HRUs).In this paper,a new discretization approach for landforms that have similar hydrologic properties is developed and discussed here for the Integrated Hydrologic Model(IHM),a combining simulation of surface and groundwater processes,accounting for the interaction between the systems.The approach used in the IHM is to disaggregate basin parameters into discrete landforms that have similar hydrologic properties.These landforms may be impervious areas,related areas,areas with high or low clay or organic fractions,areas with significantly different depths-to-water-table,and areas with different types of land cover or different land uses.Incorporating discrete landforms within basins allows significant distributed parameter analysis,but requires an efficient computational structure.The IHM integration represents a new approach interpreting fluxes across the model interface and storages near the interface for transfer to the appropriate model component,accounting for the disparate discretization while rigidly maintaining mass conservation.The discretization approaches employed in IHM will provide some ideas and insights which are helpful to those researchers who have been working on the integrated models for surface-groundwater interaction.

A Distributed Time-Variant Gain Hydrological Model Based on Remote Sensing

提出了一个完全采用遥感数据驱动的分布式时变增益水文模型,该模型通过融雪、产汇流等水文过程计算,给出流量的雪盖、蒸散发、径流等水文要素。在拉萨河流域,该模型采用遥感USGS-SRTM的3秒DEM、遥感TRMM(The Tropical RainfallMeasuring Mission)降水、Modis-LST(Land Surface Temperature)数据,建立分布式水文模型,模拟了2001-2008年日水文过程。模拟结果效率系数接近0.7,相关系数接近0.8,水量平衡误差5%以内。说明完全依靠遥感驱动水文模型进行水文水资源模拟可行。该模型为解决高寒山区无资料或缺资料地区水文水资源问题提供了一个新方法。

Hydrological assessment of TRMM rainfall data over Yangtze River Basin

High-quality rainfall information is critical for accurate simulation of runoff and water cycle processes on the land surface. In situ monitoring of rainfall has a very limited utility at the regional and global scale because of the high temporal and spatial variability of rainfall. As a step toward overcoming this problem, microwave remote sensing observations can be used to retrieve the temporal and spatial rainfall coverage because of their global availability and frequency of measurement. This paper addresses the question of whether remote sensing rainfall estimates over a catchment can be used for water balance computations in the distributed hydrological model. The TRMM 3B42V6 rainfall product was introduced into the hydrological cycle simulation of the Yangtze River Basin in South China. A tool was developed to interpolate the rain gauge observations at the same temporal and spatial resolution as the TRMM data and then evaluate the precision of TRMM 3B42V6 data from 1998 to 2006. It shows that the TRMM 3B42V6 rainfall product was reliable and had good precision in application to the Yangtze River Basin. The TRMM 3B42V6 data slightly overestimated rainfall during the wet season and underestimated rainfall during the dry season in the Yangtze River Basin. Results suggest that the TRMM 3B42V6 rainfall product can be used as an alternative data source for large-scale distributed hydrological models.

Distributed Estimation and Analysis of Precipitation Recharge Coefficient in Strongly-exploited Beijing Plain Area, China

The precipitation recharge coefficient(PRC), representing the amount of groundwater recharge from precipitation, is an important parameter for groundwater resources evaluation and numerical simulation. It was usually obtained from empirical knowledge and site experiments in the 1980 s. However, the environmental settings have been greatly modified from that time due to land use change and groundwater over-pumping, especially in the Beijing plain area(BPA). This paper aims to estimate and analyze PRC of BPA with the distributed hydrological model and GIS for the year 2011 with similar annual precipitation as long-term mean. It is found that the recharge from vertical(precipitation + irrigation) and precipitation is 291.0 mm/yr and 233.7 mm/yr, respectively, which accounts for 38.6% and 36.6% of corresponding input water. The regional mean PRC is 0.366, which is a little different from the traditional map. However, it has a spatial variation ranging from –7.0% to 17.5% for various sub-regions. Since the vadose zone is now much thicker than the evaporation extinction depth, the land cover is regarded as the major dynamic factor that causes the variation of PRC in this area due to the difference of evapotranspiration rates. It is suggested that the negative impact of reforestation on groundwater quantity within BPA should be well investigated, because the PRC beneath forestland is the smallest among all land cover types.

Development of distributed time-variant gain model for nonlinear hydrological systems

In this paper, a rainfall-runoff modeling system is developed based on a nonlinear Volterra functional series and a hydrological conceptual modeling approach. Two models, i.e. the time-variant gain model (TVGM) and the distributed time-variant gain model (DTVGM) that are built on the platform of Digital Elevation Model (DEM), Remote Sensing (RS) and Unit Hydro-logical Process were proposed. The developed DTVGM model was applied to two cases in the Heihe River Basin that is located in the arid and semiarid region of northwestern China and the Chaobai River basin located in the semihumid region of northern China. The results indicate that, in addition to the classic dynamic differential approach to describe nonlinear processes in hy-drological systems, it is possible to study such complex processes through the proposed sys-tematic approach to identify prominent hydrological relations. The DTVGM, coupling the advan-tages of both nonlinear and distributed hydrological models, can simulate variant hydrological processes under different environment conditions. Satisfactory results were obtained in fore-casting the time-space variations of hydrological processes and the relationships between land use/cover change and surface runoff variation.

Evaluating the suitability of TRMM satellite rainfall data for hydrological simulation using a distributed hydrological model in the Weihe River catchment in China

The objective of this study is to quantitatively evaluate Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission （TRMM） data with rain gauge data and further to use this TRMM data to drive a Dis- tributed Time-Variant Gain Model （DTVGM） to perform hydrological simulations in the semi-humid Weihe River catchment in China. Before the simulations, a comparison with a 10-year （2001-2010） daily rain gauge data set reveals that, at daily time step, TRMM rainfall data are better at capturing rain occurrence and mean values than rainfall extremes. On a monthly time scale, good linear relationships between TRMM and rain gauge rainfall data are found, with determination coefficients R2 varying between 0.78 and 0.89 for the individual stations. Subsequent simulation results of seven years （2001-2007） of data on daily hydro- logical processes confirm that the DTVGM when calibrated by rain gauge data performs better than when calibrated by TRMM data, but the performance of the simulation driven by TRMM data is better than that driven by gauge data on a monthly time scale. The results thus suggest that TRMM rainfall data are more suitable for monthly streamfiow simulation in the study area, and that, when the effects of recalibration and the results for water balance components are also taken into account, the TRMM 3B42-V7 product has the potential to perform well in similar basins.

A new grid-associated algorithm in the distributed hydrological model simulations

This paper presents a new grid-associated algorithm to improve the performance of a D8 algorithm based distributed hydrological model computation.The algorithm is based on the well known single-flow D8 algorithm of grid flow.This algorithm allocates calculation priorities according to the distance between the units and the outlet,then carries out the ergodic computations of the hydrological units according to the priority division.For the parallelized algorithm,a standard thread-level shared memory system for parallel programming(OpenMP-Open specifications for Multi Processing) was introduced,and the parallel coding was implemented in C lan-guage.A case study showed that the absolute speed-up ratio of the grid-associated algorithm is 1.64 over the original D8 algorithm,and the linear speed-up ratio of the parallel associated algorithm is 2.42 under 4 cores.The parallel grid-associated algorithm can be applied to a variety of research fields that use the grid method.

A distributed hydrological model with its application to the Jinghe watershed in the Yellow River Basin

For the purpose of water resources management in the Yellow River Basin with highly spatial difference, a daily distributed hydrological model was proposed, of which the determination of spatially-distributed parameters and model inputs processing were performed by means of GIS/RS. In the model, the computation of runoff yield was based on the topography index method and flow routing was modeled by Maskingum method. The operation of the model is followed by means of “command structure” technique based upon the topography of river network. A case study using the model was conducted for the Jinghe watershed, which locates at the middle Yellow River Basin. The simulation of the hydrological processes in 1996 has shown that water quantity balance errors were less than 5% and the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient arrived at 0.7, indicating that the model structure is justifiable, and the precision of the model can satisfy the purpose of water resources management.

TOPMODEL模型在岩溶地区的改进与应用

为合理评价岩溶地区水资源,在充分考虑岩溶地区水文要素的空间异质性及各水文单元之间的相互联系的基础上,作者结合TOPM ODEL模型的结构特点,对模型进行了改进。该改进模型在子流域中采用TOPM ODEL模型作产流计算,根据河道的不同属性推求汇流时间,建立汇流模型,增强了模型的分布性,解决了由于岩溶地区地下河的存在无法使用TOPM ODEL模型的问题。将此改进模型应用于鄂西蛤蟆颈水库控制流域进行模拟研究,得到了较为满意的模拟结果。