scholarly journals Data-based discharge extrapolation: estimating annual discharge for a partially gauged large river basin from its small sub-basins

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 6829-6856
Author(s):  
L. Gong
Keyword(s):  
Water Resources ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Drainage Basin ◽  
Large River ◽  
Extrapolation Method ◽  
Average Error ◽  
Sufficient Information ◽  
Baltic Sea Drainage Basin ◽  
Annual Discharge

Abstract. Large-scale hydrological models and land surface models are by far the only tools for accessing future water resources in climate change impact studies. Those models estimate discharge with large uncertainties, due to the complex interaction between climate and hydrology, the limited quality and availability of data, as well as model uncertainties. A new purely data-based scale-extrapolation method is proposed, to estimate water resources for a large basin solely from selected small sub-basins, which are typically two-orders-of-magnitude smaller than the large basin. Those small sub-basins contain sufficient information, not only on climate and land surface, but also on hydrological characteristics for the large basin In the Baltic Sea drainage basin, best discharge estimation for the gauged area was achieved with sub-basins that cover 2–4% of the gauged area. There exist multiple sets of sub-basins that resemble the climate and hydrology of the basin equally well. Those multiple sets estimate annual discharge for gauged area consistently well with 5% average error. The scale-extrapolation method is completely data-based; therefore it does not force any modelling error into the prediction. The multiple predictions are expected to bracket the inherent variations and uncertainties of the climate and hydrology of the basin. The method can be applied in both un-gauged basins and un-gauged periods with uncertainty estimation.

scholarly journals Data-driven scale extrapolation: estimating yearly discharge for a large region by small sub-basins

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 343-352
Author(s):  
L. Gong
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Drainage Basin ◽  
Extrapolation Method ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Large Region ◽  
Average Error ◽  
Sufficient Information ◽  
Quality Of Data ◽  
Baltic Sea Drainage Basin

Abstract. Large-scale hydrological models and land surface models are so far the only tools for assessing current and future water resources. Those models estimate discharge with large uncertainties, due to the complex interaction between climate and hydrology, the limited availability and quality of data, as well as model uncertainties. A new purely data-driven scale-extrapolation method to estimate discharge for a large region solely from selected small sub-basins, which are typically 1–2 orders of magnitude smaller than the large region, is proposed. Those small sub-basins contain sufficient information, not only on climate and land surface, but also on hydrological characteristics for the large basin. In the Baltic Sea drainage basin, best discharge estimation for the gauged area was achieved with sub-basins that cover 5% of the gauged area. There exist multiple sets of sub-basins whose climate and hydrology resemble those of the gauged area equally well. Those multiple sets estimate annual discharge for the gauged area consistently well with 6 % average error. The scale-extrapolation method is completely data-driven; therefore it does not force any modelling error into the prediction. The multiple predictions are expected to bracket the inherent variations and uncertainties of the climate and hydrology of the basin.

scholarly journals Characterization of Basin-Scale Dynamic Storage–Discharge Relationship Using Daily GRACE Based Storage Anomaly Data

Geosciences ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 404
Author(s):  
Durga Sharma ◽  
Swagat Patnaik ◽  
Basudev Biswal ◽  
John T. Reager
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
Drainage Basin ◽  
Land Surface Model ◽  
Large River ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Satellite Mission ◽  
Basin Scale ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Gravity Recovery

Despite the fact that streamflow occurs mainly due to depletion of storage, our knowledge on how a drainage basin stores and releases water is very limited due to measurement limitations. A window of opportunity, however, is provided to us by GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite mission that provides storage anomaly (San) data. Many studies have explored a range of potential applications of San data such as flood forecasting. Here we argue that the capability of GRACE satellite mission has not been fully explored as most of the studies in the past have performed analysis using monthly San data for large river basins. In this study, we use daily San data for several mid-sized catchments to perform storage–discharge analysis. Our results support the earlier notion that storage–discharge relationship is highly dynamic. Furthermore, we demonstrate that San data can be exploited for prediction of k of the Brutsaet–Nieber equation −dQ/dt=kQα (Q is discharge at time t). For comparison we also use storage information provided by Catchment Land Surface Model (CLSM) as well as past discharge information to predict k. Our results suggest that GRACE based storage information can be used to predict k reasonably well in gauged as well as ungauged basins.

scholarly journals Remote Sensing of Large River Basins

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soner Uereyen ◽  
Felix Bachofer ◽  
Juliane Huth ◽  
Igor Klein ◽  
Claudia Kuenzer
Keyword(s):  
Surface Water ◽  
Spatial Scale ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
River Basins ◽  
Large River ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Large River Basins

<p>Irrespective of administrative boundaries, river basins are natural spatial units covering the entire land area. They provide many resources, including freshwater, which is essential for the environment and human society, as well as irrigation water and hydropower. At the same time, river basins are highly pressured i.e. by human induced environmental changes, such as deforestation, urban expansion, dam construction, as well as climate change induced sea level rise at estuarine regions and extreme events such as droughts and flooding. Therefore, monitoring of river basins is of high importance to understand their current and future state, in particular for researchers, stake holders and decision makers. However, land surface and surface water variables of many large river basins remain mostly unmonitored at basin scale. Currently, only a few inventories characterizing large scale river basins exist. Here, spatially and temporally consistent databases describing the evolution and status of large river basins are lacking. In this context, Earth observation (EO) is a potential source of spatial information providing large scale data at global scale. In this study, we provide a comprehensive overview of research articles focusing on EO-based characterization of large river basins and corresponding land surface and surface water parameters, we summarize the spatial distribution and spatial scale of investigated study areas, we analyze used sensor types and their temporal resolution, and we identify how EO can further contribute to characterization of large river basins. The results reveal that most of the reviewed research articles focus on mapping of vegetation, surface water, as well as land cover and land use properties. In addition, we found that research articles related to EO applications hardly investigate study areas at the spatial scale of large river basins. Overall, the findings of our review contribute to a better understanding of the potentials and limitations of EO-based analyses of large river basins.</p>

scholarly journals "Blueprint" for the UP Modelling System for Large Scale Hydrology

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Ewen
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Weather Forecasting ◽  
Hydrological Cycle ◽  
Sufficient Information ◽  
Forecasting Models ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Physically Based ◽  
Up Elements ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. There are at least two needs to be met by the current research efforts on large scale hydrological modelling. The first is for practical conceptual land-surface hydrology schemes for use with existing operational climate and weather forecasting models, to replace the overly simple schemes often used in such models. The second is for models of large scale hydrology which are properly sensitive to changes in physical properties and inputs measured (or predicted) over a wide range of scales, from the point-scale upwards, yet are simple enough in structure to be coupled to climate and weather forecasting models. Such models of large scale hydrology are needed for studying the environmental impact of pollution and changes in climate and land-use, especially the impact On water resources. The UP system (name derived from Upsealed Physically-based) is an attempt to satisfy the second need. It uses a physically-based approach and has a simple structure, yet incorporates sufficient information on sub-grid behaviour to make it a useful tool for the study of environmental impacts over a wide range of scales. The system uses a new approach to large scale modelling, giving physically-based predictions of hourly flows, storages, saturated areas, etc., for regions covering hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. The basic component of the system is the UP element. This has seven water storage compartments (one each for the snowpack, vegetation canopy, surface water, root zone, unsaturated percolation, interflow and groundwater) and allows all the main processes of the terrestrial phase of the hydrological cycle to be represented. A region is modelled as a collection of UP elements, linked by a river routing scheme. Each compartment represents a fixed zone within the area covered by the UP element, and each is related to a physical process such as groundwater flow. Most of the parameterizations for the compartments are in the form of look-up tables, linking the outputs from the compartments to state variables such as the current storage in the compartment. These parameterizations are, in the main, derived from results from physically-based, distributed models applied to the zones (e.g. a groundwater compartment is parameterized using a groundwater model). For large regions modelled using many UP elements, the UP parameters are regionalized using a classification scheme, thus reducing the overall effort spent in parameterization. The development of the UP system is a long-term project involving research into physically-based parameterization of large scale hydrology models, including the effects of sub-grid spatial variations. The first stage involved developing a "blueprint" for the UP element, based on experience with physically-based, distributed river basin modelling and reviews of existing techniques and modelling approaches for large scale and linked atmosphere-hydrology modelling. This paper describes the UP element and the concepts and ideas behind the development of the UP system and, briefly, describes some of the research and development work currently in progress on UP and its parameterization.

Afforesting the UK: Potential Hydrological Impacts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Buechel ◽  
Simon Dadson ◽  
Louise Slater
Keyword(s):  
Water Resources ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Drainage Basin ◽  
Land Surface Model ◽  
Flood Management ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Catchment Scale ◽  
Strong Negative Correlation ◽  
The Uk

<p>Ambitious targets to expand forested land area have increased over the last decade as governments, businesses, and individuals seek to use woodland as carbon sinks. Currently, it is unknown how proposed afforestation rates will influence catchment water resources and hydrological processes. Both the temporal and spatial scale of proposed afforestation are unprecedented on contemporary timescales and we lack the systematic and quantified understanding of its impact on streamflow at catchment scales. Furthermore, the efficacy of afforestation as a form of natural flood management has yet to be tested across multiple catchments (> 30 km<sup>2</sup>).</p><p> </p><p>The UK Government has pledged to use afforestation as a major component of its approach to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. In this project, we investigate the influence of afforestation upon streamflow dynamics in twelve catchments across the British Isles. We aim to determine how woodland planting extent and location influences catchment streamflow response and sensitivity, and which catchment attributes account for these changes. To do this, we use physics-based land surface model JULES (Joint UK Land Environment Simulator) at a 1 km resolution to understand the potential hydrological changes to theoretical afforestation scenarios.</p><p> </p><p>Land cover afforestation scenarios were created according to proximity to existing land cover, drainage basin structure and afforestation rate (up to 288 potential land cover scenarios per catchment). The period of 2000-2010, a flood-rich period, was used to simulate and compare how each afforestation scenario would influence catchment flow exceedance levels and streamflow regime using the CHESS-met dataset.</p><p> </p><p>Results show increasing afforestation has a clear impact upon streamflow dynamics. A strong negative correlation between increasing afforestation and median and low flows exists but is weaker for higher flows. Some afforestation scenarios could increase the highest flows in the period. Quantile regression on the results of our simulations shows a median change of -1.0 ± 0.21 mm yr<sup>-1</sup> (-0.26 ± 0.10%) for the median flow exceedance per percentage point of broadleaf woodland planted across all catchments. Planting according to Shreve order, or contributing area, led to statistically significant differences in streamflow dynamics. Climatic catchment attributes correlated strongly with catchment median flow sensitivity to afforestation.</p><p> </p><p>These results help us to understand how afforestation may influence catchment response to external climatic forcing.  We hope it provides evidence to policymakers wishing to understand the implications of afforestation on water resources and the foundation to understand its future catchment-scale impacts on streamflow.</p>

scholarly journals On the Suitability of GCM Runoff Fields for River Discharge Modeling: A Case Study Using Model Output from HadGEM2 and ECHAM5

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. C. Sperna Weiland ◽  
L. P. H. van Beek ◽  
J. C. J. Kwadijk ◽  
M. F. P. Bierkens
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
River Discharge ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Hydrological Modeling ◽  
Hydrological Model ◽  
Meteorological Data ◽  
Subsurface Runoff ◽  
Discharge Modeling ◽  
Annual Discharge

Abstract The representation of hydrological processes in land surface schemes (LSSs) has recently been improved. In this study, the usability of GCM runoff for river discharge modeling is evaluated by validating the mean, timing, and amplitude of the modeled annual discharge cycles against observations. River discharge was calculated for six large rivers using runoff, precipitation, and actual evaporation from the GCMs ECHAM5 and Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model version 2 (HadGEM2). Four methods were applied: 1) accumulation of GCM runoff, 2) routing of GCM runoff, 3) routing of GCM runoff combined with temporal storage of subsurface runoff, and 4) offline hydrological modeling with the global distributed hydrological model PCRaster Global Water Balance (PCR-GLOBWB) using meteorological data from the GCMs as forcing. The quality of discharge generated by all four methods is highly influenced by the quality of the GCM data. In small catchments, the methods that include runoff routing perform equally well, although offline modeling with PRC-GLOBWB outperforms the other methods for ECHAM5 data. For larger catchments, routing introduces realistic travel times, decreased day-to-day variability, and it reduces extremes. Complexity of the LSS of both GCMs is comparable to the complexity of the hydrological model. However, in HadGEM2 the absence of subgrid variability for saturated hydraulic conductivity results in a large subsurface runoff flux and a low seasonal variability in the annual discharge cycle. The analysis of these two GCMs shows that when LSSs are tuned to reproduce realistic water partitioning at the grid scale and a routing scheme is also included, discharge variability and change derived from GCM runoff could be as useful as changes derived from runoff obtained from offline simulations using large-scale hydrological models.

New advanced designed systems to ensure safeguard of the territory and preservation of water resources for irrigation

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Cinalberto Bertozzi ◽  
Fabio Paglione
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Drainage Basin ◽  
Land Reclamation ◽  
Land Area ◽  
Water Board ◽  
Management Schemes ◽  
Innovative Techniques ◽  
River Po ◽  
Crop Irrigation

The Burana Land-Reclamation Board is an interregional water board operating in three regions and five provinces. The Burana Land-Reclamation Board operates over a land area of about 250,000 hectares between the Rivers Secchia, Panaro and Samoggia, which forms the drainage basin of the River Panaroand part of the Burana-Po di Volano, from the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines to the River Po. Its main tasks are the conservation and safeguarding of the territory, with particular attention to water resources and how they are used, ensuring rainwater drainage from urban centres, avoiding flooding but ensuringwater supply for crop irrigation in the summer to combat drought. Since the last century the Burana Land-Reclamation Board has been using innovative techniques in the planning of water management schemes designed to achieve the above aims, improving the management of water resources while keeping a constant eye on protection of the environment.

Managing the impacts of mining on Ghana’s water resources from a legal perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 156-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nasirudeen Abdul Fatawu
Keyword(s):  
Surface Water ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Mining Activities ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
Environmental Laws ◽  
Mining Areas ◽  
Legal Perspective

Recent floods in Ghana are largely blamed on mining activities. Not only are lives lost through these floods, farms andproperties are destroyed as a result. Water resources are diverted, polluted and impounded upon by both large-scale minersand small-scale miners. Although these activities are largely blamed on behavioural attitudes that need to be changed, thereare legal dimensions that should be addressed as well. Coincidentally, a great proportion of the water resources of Ghana arewithin these mining areas thus the continual pollution of these surface water sources is a serious threat to the environmentand the development of the country as a whole. The environmental laws need to be oriented properly with adequate sanctionsto tackle the impacts mining has on water resources. The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure needs to bestreamlined and undertaken by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and not the company itself.

DRAINAGE BASIN AS A COMPLEX SOCIO-NATURAL HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-303
Author(s):  
VALERIY BONDAREV
Keyword(s):  
Drainage Basin ◽  
Temporal Analysis ◽  
Large River ◽  
Hierarchical Level ◽  
Effective Management ◽  
Drainage Basins ◽  
Time Intervals ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Analysis ◽  
Entire Complex

The theoretical and methodological basis of the systems hierarchical spatial and temporal analysis of a drainage basin, which addresses the problems of effective management in socio-natural systems of different ranks, is considered. It is proposed to distinguish 9 orders of forms that are relevant to the analysis of drainage basins, where the first level is represented by individual aggregates and particles, and the last - by basins of large and the largest rivers. As part of the allocation of geological, historical and modern time intervals, the specificity of the implementation of processes in basins of different scales from changing states, through functioning to evolution is demonstrated. The interrelation of conditions and factors that determine the processes occurring within the drainage basins is revealed. It is shown that a specific combination of conditions and factors that determine processes in the drainage basin is associated with the hierarchy of the objects under consideration, i.e. the choice of a spatial-temporal hierarchical level is crucial for the organization of study within drainage basins. At one hierarchical level, some phenomenon can be considered as a factor, and at another - as a condition. For example, tectonic processes can be considered as an active factor in the evolution of large river basins in the geological perspective, but for small drainage basin, this is already a conservative background condition. It is shown that at the historical time the anthropogenic factor often comes to the fore, with the appearance of which in the functioning of the drainage basin, there is a need to take into account the entire complex of socio-environmental problems that can affect the sustainable state of various territories, especially in the field of water and land use. Hierarchical levels of managing subjects are identified, which are primarily responsible for effective management at the appropriate hierarchical level of the organization of the socio-natural system within the catchment area, starting from an individual to humankind as a whole.

Ground-water resources of the Parowan-Cedar City drainage basin, Iron County, Utah

1977 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Jay Bjorklund ◽  
C.T. Sumsion ◽  
G.W. Sandberg
Keyword(s):  
Water Resources ◽  
Ground Water ◽  
Drainage Basin
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