| Title: | Assessing the climatic and temporal transposability of the SWAT Model across a large contrasted watershed |
| Authors: | Grusson, Y., F. Anctil, S. Sauvage and J.M. Sánchez Pérez |
| Year: | 2017 |
| Journal: | Journal of Hydrologic Engineering |
| Volume (Issue): | 22(6) |
| Pages: | Article ID: 04017004 |
| Article ID: | 04017004 |
| DOI: | 10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0001491 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | hydrologic only |
| Primary Application Category: | calibration, sensitivity, and/or uncertainty analysis |
| Secondary Application Category: | climate change and land use change |
| Watershed Description: | 55,000 km^2 Garonne River, which drains to the Atlantic Ocean in southwest France. |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | The use of hydrological models to undertake climate change research raises the question of their robustness for use in a long-term
projection when calibrated over a period in the recent past. The aim of this study was to assess the temporal transposability of the soil and
water assessment tool (SWAT) model in the face of changes in climate and land use information. The model is set up on the Garonne River
watershed in southwest France and two different tests were conducted: (1) two five-year periods were selected from the past 50 years: a dry
and warm (DW) period and a wet and cold (WC) period. In this case, the model was calibrated for each period, and then each was cross validated
with the other; (2) the same process was undertaken using two sets of land use data from 1990 and 2006. The model was calibrated
for the same time period (2000–2010), and each land use data set was cross-validated with the other. All four of the calibration/validation tests
showed that the model was able to simulate the monthly stream effectively. Most of the 20 sites spread over the watershed have Nash-Sutcliffe
criterion (NSe) and Nash-SutcliffE criterion calculated on the squared roots values of the discharge (NSeSqrt) above 0.75. The robustness of
the SWAT model when confronted with changes to the climate or land use data was also very satisfactory: a variation of less than +-0.10 is
induced for 14 sites and both metrics. Sites where simulations appeared more sensitive to those changes were either impacted by snowfall/
melt processes during the winter season or by the low-flow support provided by hydraulic structure during the summer season in order to
sustain irrigation. A change in land-use information caused even less instability: all 20 sites showed a variation in performances of less than
+-0.10 for both metrics. It was concluded from this study that the SWAT model could be used over the Garonne River watershed in a climate
change condition. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | |