scholarly journals Effect of DEM Resolution on Runoff Yield, and Sensitivity of Parameters Contributing to Runoff in a Watershed

Author(s):  
Mohammad Nazari-Sharabian ◽  
Moses Karakouzian ◽  
Sajjad Ahmad

Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are essential in watershed delineation, but the sensitivity of simulated runoff to DEM resolution is poorly understood. This study investigates the impact of DEM resolution on topological attributes and simulated runoff in the Mahabad Dam watershed, Iran. To delineate the watershed, DEMs with 12.5 m, 30 m, and 90 m resolutions were acquired from the ALOS PALSAR, Space Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), and ASTER global DEM data source, respectively. Watershed and streamlines were delineated in ArcGIS, with hydrologic analyses performed using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). Sensitivity analysis on parameters contributing to runoff was done using Sequential Uncertainties Fitting Ver-2 (SUFI-2) Algorithm, in SWAT Calibration and Uncertainty Procedures (SWAT-CUP) software. Results showed the watershed area, reach lengths, and elevations in the watershed varied due to DEM resolutions. Higher amounts of runoff were generated when DEMs with finer resolutions were implemented. The 12.5 m DEM generated 3.48% and 0.42% more runoff compared with 90 m and 30 m DEMs, respectively. SWAT-CUP results showed the sensitivity of parameters contributing to runoff changes under different DEM resolutions. Regardless of DEM resolution, surface properties, available water capacity, and moisture levels in the soil are the most sensitive parameters. As the distribution of slope changes in different DEM resolutions, surface parameters are most affected. The findings indicate to reduce computation time and speed up computation procedures, researchers may use DEMs with coarser resolutions at the expense of minor decreases in accuracy.

Author(s):  
Farinaz Gholami ◽  
Alireza Nemati ◽  
Yue Li ◽  
Yang Hong ◽  
Junlong Zhang

The Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of a watershed is one of the most important inputs in most hydrological analyses and plays a key role in the accurate prediction of various hydrological processes. Comprehensive knowledge of the impact of different DEM sources on the performance of a model is essential before utilizing the model. In this study, we evaluated the influence of TOPO1:25000, ASTER, and SRTM DEMs, as input, on the performance of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model for the prediction of surface runoff. We also investigated the effect of the resolution of the studied DEM sources on the accuracy of the SWAT model in the estimation of runoff. The second objective of this study was to identify the most influential and the least impactful input parameters on the performance of the SWAT model. We studied the Zarrineh River watershed in Iran as a case study to compare the effect of the aforementioned DEM types and DEM resolution on the output of the SWAT model. The outcomes of the study demonstrated that influential parameters on predicted runoff as well as a few watershed parameters, such as reach lengths, reach slopes, number of sub-basins, and the number of hydrologic response units (HRU), differs noticeably when the DEM source and resolution changes. It was also observed that simulated results over-predict the runoff during low precipitation periods and under-predict the runoff during high precipitation months, and the accuracy of the simulated results decreases by reducing the DEM resolution. The results showed that the SWAT model had the best performance when the TOPO1:25000 DEM was used as the input source. Low-resolution DEMs are available to a wider range of researchers. The outcomes of the current study can be employed to estimate the impact of low-resolution input data on the simulated result as well as substantially reduce the computation time by decreasing the input DEMresolution with only a minor reduction of accuracy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Nazari-Sharabian ◽  
Masoud Taheriyoun ◽  
Moses Karakouzian

Abstract This study investigates the impact of different digital elevation model (DEM) resolutions on the topological attributes and simulated runoff, as well as the sensitivity of runoff parameters in the Mahabad Dam watershed in Iran. The watershed and streamlines were delineated in ArcGIS, and the hydrologic analyses were performed using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The sensitivity analysis on runoff parameters was performed, using the Sequential Uncertainties FItting Ver. 2 algorithm, in the SWAT Calibration and Uncertainty Procedures (SWAT-CUP) program. The results indicated that the sensitivity of runoff parameters, watershed surface area, and elevations changed under different DEM resolutions. As the distribution of slopes changed using different DEMs, surface parameters were most affected. Furthermore, higher amounts of runoff were generated when DEMs with finer resolutions were implemented. In comparison with the observed value of 8 m3/s at the watershed outlet, the 12.5 m DEM showed more realistic results (6.77 m3/s). Comparatively, the 12.5 m DEM generated 0.74% and 2.73% more runoff compared with the 30 and 90 m DEMs, respectively. The findings of this study indicate that in order to reduce computation time, researchers may use DEMs with coarser resolutions at the expense of minor decreases in accuracy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Waranyu Buakhao ◽  
Anongrit Kangrang

A digital elevation model (DEM) is an important spatial input for automatic extraction of topographic parameters for the soil and water assessment tool (SWAT). The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of DEM resolution (from 5 to 90 m) on the delineation process of a SWAT model with two types of watershed characteristics (flat area and mountain area) and three sizes of watershed area (about 20,000, 200,000, and 1,500,000 hectares). The results showed that the total lengths of the streamline, main channel slope, watershed area, and area slope were significantly different when using the DEM datasets to delineate. Delineation using the SRTM DEM (90 m), ASTER DEM (30 m), and LDD DEM (5 m) for all watershed characteristics showed that the watershed sizes and shapes obtained were only slightly different, whereas the area slopes obtained were significantly different. The total lengths of the generated streams increased when the resolution of the DEM used was higher. The stream slopes obtained using the small area sizes were insignificant, whereas the slopes obtained using the large area sizes were significantly different. This suggests that water resource model users should use the ASTER DEM as opposed to a finer resolution DEM for model input to save time for the model calibration and validation.


2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 4411-4435 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Lin ◽  
C. Jing ◽  
V. Chaplot ◽  
X. Yu ◽  
Z. Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) have been successfully used in a large range of environmental issues. Several methods such as digital contour interpolation and remote sensing have allowed the generation of DEMs, some of which are now freely available for almost the entire globe. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a widely used semi-distributed model operating at the watershed level and has previously been shown to be very sensitive to the quality of the input topographic information. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of DEMs generated from different data sources, respectively DLG5m (local Digital Line Graph, 5 m interval), ASTER30m (1 arc-s ASTER Global DEM Version 1, approximately 30 m resolution), and SRTM90m (3 arc-s SRTM Version 4, approximately 90 m resolution), on SWAT predictions for runoff, sediment, total phosphor (TP) and total nitrogen (TN). Eleven resolutions, from 5 m to 140 m, were considered in this study. Results indicate that the predictions of TPs and TNs decreased substantially with coarser resampled resolution. Slightly decreased trends could be found in the predicted sediments when DEMs were resampled to coarser resolutions. Predicted runoffs were not sensitive to resampled resolutions. The predicted outputs based on DLG5m were more sensitive to resampled resolutions than those based on ASTER30m and SRTM90m. At original resolutions, the predicted outputs based on ASTER30m and SRTM90m were similar, but the predicted TNs and TPs based on ASTER30m and SRTM90m were much lower than the one based on DLG5m. For the predicted TNs and TPs, which were substantially sensitive to DEM resolutions, the output accuracies of SWAT derived from ASTER30m and SRTM90m could be improved by down-scaled resampling, but they could not improve on finer DEM (DLG5m) at the same resolution. This study helps GIS environmental model users to understand the sensitivities of SWAT to DEM resolution, and choose feasible DEM data for environmental models.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 3016
Author(s):  
Ignacio Borlaf-Mena ◽  
Maurizio Santoro ◽  
Ludovic Villard ◽  
Ovidiu Badea ◽  
Mihai Andrei Tanase

Spaceborne remote sensing can track ecosystems changes thanks to continuous and systematic coverage at short revisit intervals. Active remote sensing from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors allows day and night imaging as they are not affected by cloud cover and solar illumination and can capture unique information about its targets. However, SAR observations are affected by the coupled effect of viewing geometry and terrain topography. The study aims to assess the impact of global digital elevation models (DEMs) on the normalization of Sentinel-1 backscattered intensity and interferometric coherence. For each DEM, we analyzed the difference between orbit tracks, the difference with results obtained with a high-resolution local DEM, and the impact on land cover classification. Tests were carried out at two sites located in mountainous regions in Romania and Spain using the SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, 30 m), AW3D (ALOS (Advanced Land Observation Satellite) World 3D, 30 m), TanDEM-X (12.5, 30, 90 m), and Spain national ALS (aerial laser scanning) based DEM (5 m resolution). The TanDEM-X DEM was the global DEM most suitable for topographic normalization, since it provided the smallest differences between orbital tracks, up to 3.5 dB smaller than with other DEMs for peak landform, and 1.4–1.9 dB for pit and valley landforms.


Author(s):  
Abdullahi Muktar ◽  
Sadiq A. Yelwa ◽  
Muhammad Tayyib Bello ◽  
Wali Elekwachi

The flooding of River Rima is an annual issue affecting farmland located within the floodplains. This phenomena causes loss of farm produce and mass destruction of buildings, including roads and bridges in the area. Estimating the farmland affected by the flood will help the policy makers in decision making on how to mitigate the impact of flooding in the affected areas. The Terra/MODIS satellite image with 7-2-1 bands combination was used to classify the image into four landcover types. The area covered by flood was selected to calculate the flood area using Image Calculator module on QGIS software. The class of water was imposed on Digital Elevation Model that was obtained from Environmental Monitoring Satellite called The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The result shows that River Rima flood occupies about 17,517 km2, equivalent to 1.7 million hectares of farmland that is below 230 meters (ASL). It was recommended that the local authorities and decision makers may use the flood map to showing flood risk zones so as to deter construction beyond the buffer. Farmers should adhere strictly to NiMet’s advice based on flood predictions. The civil engineers should also take note of the maximum water level during flooding so as to apply professional advice when constructing roads and bridges in the area.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 176-183
Author(s):  
L.Yu. Privalov ◽  
C.I. Mikhaylenko

Based on numerical simulation, the production of cold and hot air on a modified countercurrent vortex tube is studied. A feature of the modification under study is an additional air inlet area along the axis of the pipe from the hot outlet side. An additional point of blowing air is designed to redistribute the gas flows at the cold and hot outlets. Computational experiments were performed in the OpenFOAM software package using the sonicFoam solver based on the k−ε turbulence model under the assumption of an ideal gas. The dependence of the flow rate and temperature at the cold and hot outlets for different lengths of the main channel of the vortex tube was studied. For all considered pipe lengths, finite-volume grids were prepared in which the rectangular shape of the cells was preferably observed and their excessive stretching was avoided. To speed up the simulations, MPI technology was used; spatial decomposition of the original mesh was performed by decomposePar utility into equal parts along the pipe. This approach allowed us to reduce the computation time by approximately 3.5 times when running on six processes. The results of parallel modeling were combined with the reconstructPar utility and further processed by a Python program written using the vtk library. Thus, average values of the main physical characteristics by time and space at the cold and hot outlets were obtained. Results are discussed that demonstrate the effect of the vortex tube length on temperature and air flow at the respective outputs. The behavior of its main characteristics, non-standard for a vortex tube, is shown, an assumption is made about the reason for this behavior: the collision of very fast flows makes instability. Preliminary conclusions are made about choosing the effective length of the vortex tube with an additional air inlet channel at which the ratio of air temperature at the hot and cold outlets is the largest.


Author(s):  
Ting-Pin Chiu 1 ◽  
Su-Fen Wang 2

Topographic correction models (TCMs) are valid on satellite image data preprocessing steps. The illumination angle may be sensitive to different terrain slope and aspect conditions base on sun-terrain-sensor geometry. Although the topographic correction is influenced by the sun azimuth and zenith angle, the correction result can be equally in the same image status. By contrast, the terrain factors change with different digital elevation model (DEM) resolution in the topographic correction equations and cause a significant effect. Slope is sensitive in rugged terrain, and aspect is impressionable at flat surface at a coarse DEM resolution data. As the DEM resolution lead a distinct result on TCMs, this research is aimed to examine the impact of DEM resolution on the accuracy of terrain representation and of the gradient determined. In this study, five TCMs, including cosine correction, C correction, SCS correction, SCS+C correction and Minnaert correction models are compared by different resolutions using SPOT image data. The 5 meter DEM obtained from Ministry of the interior will be resampled to 10 to 500 meters to test those topographic models sustainability on Lienhuachih Research Center. The accuracy of five topographic correction models base on different DEM resolution will be evaluated by root-mean-square error (RMSE).


Methodology ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Ramon Barrada ◽  
Julio Olea ◽  
Vicente Ponsoda

Abstract. The Sympson-Hetter (1985) method provides a means of controlling maximum exposure rate of items in Computerized Adaptive Testing. Through a series of simulations, control parameters are set that mark the probability of administration of an item on being selected. This method presents two main problems: it requires a long computation time for calculating the parameters and the maximum exposure rate is slightly above the fixed limit. Van der Linden (2003) presented two alternatives which appear to solve both of the problems. The impact of these methods in the measurement accuracy has not been tested yet. We show how these methods over-restrict the exposure of some highly discriminating items and, thus, the accuracy is decreased. It also shown that, when the desired maximum exposure rate is near the minimum possible value, these methods offer an empirical maximum exposure rate clearly above the goal. A new method, based on the initial estimation of the probability of administration and the probability of selection of the items with the restricted method ( Revuelta & Ponsoda, 1998 ), is presented in this paper. It can be used with the Sympson-Hetter method and with the two van der Linden's methods. This option, when used with Sympson-Hetter, speeds the convergence of the control parameters without decreasing the accuracy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 3226
Author(s):  
Daniel Cunningham ◽  
Paul Cunningham ◽  
Matthew E. Fagan

Global tree cover products face challenges in accurately predicting tree cover across biophysical gradients, such as precipitation or agricultural cover. To generate a natural forest cover map for Costa Rica, biases in tree cover estimation in the most widely used tree cover product (the Global Forest Change product (GFC) were quantified and corrected, and the impact of map biases on estimates of forest cover and fragmentation was examined. First, a forest reference dataset was developed to examine how the difference between reference and GFC-predicted tree cover estimates varied along gradients of precipitation and elevation, and nonlinear statistical models were fit to predict the bias. Next, an agricultural land cover map was generated by classifying Landsat and ALOS PalSAR imagery (overall accuracy of 97%) to allow removing six common agricultural crops from estimates of tree cover. Finally, the GFC product was corrected through an integrated process using the nonlinear predictions of precipitation and elevation biases and the agricultural crop map as inputs. The accuracy of tree cover prediction increased by ≈29% over the original global forest change product (the R2 rose from 0.416 to 0.538). Using an optimized 89% tree cover threshold to create a forest/nonforest map, we found that fragmentation declined and core forest area and connectivity increased in the corrected forest cover map, especially in dry tropical forests, protected areas, and designated habitat corridors. By contrast, the core forest area decreased locally where agricultural fields were removed from estimates of natural tree cover. This research demonstrates a simple, transferable methodology to correct for observed biases in the Global Forest Change product. The use of uncorrected tree cover products may markedly over- or underestimate forest cover and fragmentation, especially in tropical regions with low precipitation, significant topography, and/or perennial agricultural production.


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