Title: | Hydrological responses to various land use, soil and weather inputs in northern Lake Erie Basin in Canada |
Authors: | Daggupati, P., R. Shukla, B. Mekonnen, R. Rudra, A. Biswas, P.K. Goel, S. Prasher and W. Yang |
Year: | 2018 |
Journal: | Water |
Volume (Issue): | 10(2) |
Pages: | |
Article ID: | 222 |
DOI: | 10.3390/w10020222 |
URL (non-DOI journals): | |
Model: | SWAT |
Broad Application Category: | hydrologic only |
Primary Application Category: | input data effects |
Secondary Application Category: | hydrologic assessment |
Watershed Description: | 21,750 km^2 Northern Lake Erie drainage area, which is comprised of Grand River, Thames River, Sydenham Creek, Bear Creek, and Big Creek and is located in southern Ontario, Canada. |
Calibration Summary: | |
Validation Summary: | |
General Comments: | |
Abstract: | In the last decade, Lake Erie, one of the great lakes bordering Canada and the USA has
been under serious threat due to increased phosphorus levels originating from agricultural fields.
Large scale watersheds contributing to Lake Erie from the USA side are being simulated using
hydrological and water quality (H/WQ) models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT)
and the results from the model are being used by policy and decision makers to implement better
management decisions to solve emerging phosphorus issues. On the Canadian side, modeling
applications are limited to either small watersheds or one major watershed contributing to Lake Erie.
To the best of our knowledge, no efforts have been made to model the entire contributing watersheds
to Lake Erie from Canada. This study applied the SWAT model for Northern Lake Erie Basin (NLEB;
entire contributing basin to Lake Erie). Various provincial, national and global inputs of weather,
land use and soil at various resolutions was assessed to evaluate the effects of input data types
on the simulation of hydrological processes and streamflows. Twelve scenarios were developed
using the input combinations and selected scenarios were evaluated at selected locations along
the Grand and Thames Rivers using model performance statistics, and graphical comparisons of
time variable plots and flow duration curves (FDCs). In addition, various hydrological components
such as surface runoff, water yield, and evapotranspiration were also evaluated. Global level
coarse resolution weather and soil did not perform better compared to fine resolution national data.
Interestingly, in the case of land use, global and national/provincial land use were close, however, fine
resolution provincial data performed slightly better. This study found that interpolated weather data
from Environment Canada climate station observations performed slightly better compared to the
measured data and therefore could be a good choice to use for large-scale H/WQ modeling studies. |
Language: | English |
Keywords: | SWAT; Lake Erie; input data comparison; DEM; land use; soils |