Calibration and Validation of the SWAT Model on the Watershed of Bafing River, Main Upstream Tributary of Senegal River: Checking for the Influence of the Period of Study

Management of reservoir water resources requires the knowledge of flow inputs in this reservoir. Hydrological rainfall-runoff model is used for this purpose. There are several types of hydrological model according the description of the hydrological processes: black-box models, conceptual models, deterministic physical based model. SWAT is a semi-distributed hydrological model designed for water quality and quantity. This versatile tool has been used all around the world to assess and manage water resources. The main objective of the paper is to calibrate and validate the SWAT model on the watershed of Bafing located between 10°30' and 12°30' north latitude and between 12°30' and 9°30' west longitude to assess climate change on this river flows. A DEM with a resolution of 12.5 m × 12.5 m, the daily average flows and the daily observed precipitations on the period 1979-1986 (long period) are used as inputs for the calibration, while precipitations for the period 1988-1994 are used for the validation. The sensitivity analysis was done to detect the most determining coefficients during the calibration step. It shows that 19 parameters are required. Then, the effect of the period on the parameters calibration is checked by considering first the whole period of study and then each year of the period of study. The Nash criterion was used to compare the calculated and the observed hygrographs in each case. The results showed that the longer is the period of calibration, the more accurate is the Nash criterion. The calibration per year gave a best Nash criterion except for a single year. During the validation, the parameters calculated on the long period lead to the best Nash criterion. The values of the Nash criterion calibration and validation are very suitable. These results of calibration can be used to study the long-term evolution of flow at Senegal River on Bafing Makana.