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Large‐Scale Hydrological Simulations Using the Soil Water Assessment Tool, Protocol Development, and Application in the Danube Basin
Author(s) -
Pagliero Liliana,
Bouraoui Fayçal,
Willems Patrick,
Diels Jan
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of environmental quality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.888
H-Index - 171
eISSN - 1537-2537
pISSN - 0047-2425
DOI - 10.2134/jeq2011.0359
Subject(s) - water framework directive , environmental science , european union , context (archaeology) , hydrology (agriculture) , structural basin , soil and water assessment tool , water resources , scale (ratio) , protocol (science) , environmental resource management , calibration , water resource management , water quality , drainage basin , streamflow , geography , geology , statistics , ecology , cartography , alternative medicine , mathematics , business , archaeology , pathology , biology , economic policy , paleontology , medicine , geotechnical engineering
The Water Framework Directive of the European Union requires member states to achieve good ecological status of all water bodies. A harmonized pan‐European assessment of water resources availability and quality, as affected by various management options, is necessary for a successful implementation of European environmental legislation. In this context, we developed a methodology to predict surface water flow at the pan‐European scale using available datasets. Among the hydrological models available, the Soil Water Assessment Tool was selected because its characteristics make it suitable for large‐scale applications with limited data requirements. This paper presents the results for the Danube pilot basin. The Danube Basin is one of the largest European watersheds, covering approximately 803,000 km 2 and portions of 14 countries. The modeling data used included land use and management information, a detailed soil parameters map, and high‐resolution climate data. The Danube Basin was divided into 4663 subwatersheds of an average size of 179 km 2 . A modeling protocol is proposed to cope with the problems of hydrological regionalization from gauged to ungauged watersheds and overparameterization and identifiability, which are usually present during calibration. The protocol involves a cluster analysis for the determination of hydrological regions and multiobjective calibration using a combination of manual and automated calibration. The proposed protocol was successfully implemented, with the modeled discharges capturing well the overall hydrological behavior of the basin.