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Effect of the Spatial Variability of Land Use, Soil Type, and Precipitation on Streamflows in Small Watersheds 1
Author(s) -
Cho Huidae,
Olivera Francisco
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
jawra journal of the american water resources association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.957
H-Index - 105
eISSN - 1752-1688
pISSN - 1093-474X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2009.00315.x
Subject(s) - watershed , environmental science , vflo , hydrology (agriculture) , surface runoff , precipitation , spatial distribution , spatial variability , hydrograph , land use , hydrological modelling , soil type , spatial ecology , spatial analysis , soil science , soil water , runoff model , remote sensing , geology , meteorology , computer science , geography , climatology , mathematics , statistics , ecology , biology , machine learning , geotechnical engineering , engineering , civil engineering
The spatial variability of the data used in models includes the spatial discretization of the system into subsystems, the data resolution, and the spatial distribution of hydrologic features and parameters. In this study, we investigate the effect of the spatial distribution of land use, soil type, and precipitation on the simulated flows at the outlet of “small watersheds” (i.e., watersheds with times of concentration shorter than the model computational time step). The Soil and Water Assessment Tool model was used to estimate runoff and hydrographs. Different representations of the spatial data resulted in comparable model performances and even the use of uniform land use and soil type maps, instead of spatially distributed, was not noticeable. It was found that, although spatially distributed data help understand the characteristics of the watershed and provide valuable information to distributed hydrologic models, when the watershed is small, realistic representations of the spatial data do not necessarily improve the model performance. The results obtained from this study provide insights on the relevance of taking into account the spatial distribution of land use, soil type, and precipitation when modeling small watersheds.