SWAT Literature Database for Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

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