Strategies for smarter catchment hydrology models: incorporating scaling and better process representation
Open Access
- 22 June 2021
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Geoscience Letters
- Vol. 8 (1), 1-14
- https://doi.org/10.1186/s40562-021-00193-9
Abstract
Hydrological models have proliferated in the past several decades prompting debates on the virtues and shortcomings of various modelling approaches. Rather than critiquing individual models or modelling approaches, the objective here is to address the critical issues of scaling and hydrological process representation in various types of models with suggestions for improving these attributes in a parsimonious manner that captures and explains their functionality as simply as possible. This discussion focuses mostly on conceptual and physical/process-based models where understanding the internal catchment processes and hydrologic pathways is important. Such hydrological models can be improved by using data from advanced remote sensing (both spatial and temporal) and derivatives, applications of machine learning, flexible structures, and informing models through nested catchment studies in which internal catchment processes are elucidated. Incorporating concepts of hydrological connectivity into flexible model structures is a promising approach for improving flow path representation. Also important is consideration of the scale dependency of hydrological parameters to avoid scale mismatch between measured and modelled parameters. Examples are presented from remote high-elevation regions where water sources and pathways differ from temperate and tropical environments where more attention has been focused. The challenge of incorporating spatially and temporally variable water inputs, hydrologically pathways, climate, and land use into hydrological models requires modellers to collaborate with catchment hydrologists to include important processes at relevant scales—i.e. develop smarter hydrological models.Keywords
This publication has 131 references indexed in Scilit:
- Asia's water balanceNature Geoscience, 2012
- Prolegomena to sediment and flow connectivity in the landscape: A GIS and field numerical assessmentCATENA, 2008
- GIS-based recharge estimation by coupling surface–subsurface water balancesJournal of Hydrology, 2007
- Impacts of logging disturbance on hillslope saturated hydraulic conductivity in a tropical forest in Peninsular MalaysiaCATENA, 2006
- Calibration of a semi-distributed hydrologic model for streamflow estimation along a river systemJournal of Hydrology, 2004
- Application of two hydrologic models with different runoff mechanisms to a hillslope dominated watershed in the northeastern US: a comparison of HSPF and SMRJournal of Hydrology, 2003
- Mass transport and scale-dependent hydraulic tests in a heterogeneous glacial till–sandy aquifer systemJournal of Hydrology, 2001
- Parameterisation, calibration and validation of distributed hydrological modelsJournal of Hydrology, 1997
- On scaling exponents of spatial peak flows from rainfall and river network geometryJournal of Hydrology, 1996
- Seasonal hydrologic response at various spatial scales in a small forested catchment, Hitachi Ohta, JapanJournal of Hydrology, 1995