| Title: | Diagnosis and treatment of the SWAT hydrological response using the Budyko Framework |
| Authors: | Malagò, A., F. Bouraoui and A. De Roo |
| Year: | 2018 |
| Journal: | Sustainability |
| Volume (Issue): | 10(5) |
| Pages: | 1373 |
| Article ID: | |
| DOI: | 10.3390/su10051373 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | hydrologic only |
| Primary Application Category: | baseflow, interflow and/or other hydrologic component analysis |
| Secondary Application Category: | hydrologic assessment |
| Watershed Description: | 803,000 km^2 Danube River, which drains 19 countries in Central and South-Eastern Europe (14 of which are called “Danube countries” with catchment areas > 2000 km^2), and the second largest river basin in Europe. |
| Calibration Summary: | The simulation period was 1990–2009 including five years used as warm-up to mitigate the unknown
initial conditions. In short, a regionalized calibration and validation procedure was developed and
applied to ensure that monthly streamflow and its components were correctly simulated. The hydrologic
parameters were calibrated in 264 headwaters for the period 1995–2006, followed by a regionalization
of the calibrated parameters. The model was then validated in 708 stations for the period 1995–2009.
After calibration and regionalization, about 70% of the gauging stations of the calibration dataset reached
satisfactory percent bias comparing the observed and simulated monthly streamflow.
From the validated dataset, 60% of the gauging stations reached satisfactory performance. Additional
details about the SWAT and calibration can be found in Malago’ et al. 2017 |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | The hydrologic response of a river basin pertains to how precipitation is partitioned into
streamflow, evapotranspiration, and infiltration. The reliability of all these components is essential for
the sustainable use of water resources. This paper seeks to understand if the prediction of the main
components of the water balance from the SWAT model can be controlled and interpreted by a
simple Darwinian approach: the Budyko framework. The Danube Basin was selected to assess
the SWAT model green (evapotranspiration) and blue water fluxes (water yield or water that runs off
the landscape into rivers) in a diagnostic approach based on two mono-parametric Budyko curve-type
equations. This analysis was conducted comparing the evaporative index (EI) and the base flow
index (BFI) predicted by Budyko’s equations based on observed data from 418 gauging stations with
those simulated by SWAT. The study demonstrated that SWAT evapotranspiration estimations were
in good agreement with those of the Budyko curves, whereas SWAT baseflow underestimated the Inn
and Austrian Danube regions. The analysis of the Budyko equations in each water management
region of the Danube provided a pioneering understanding of the relationship between EI and BFI in
the study area, leading to an improvement of the hydrological simulations and providing a more
reliable water balance in each water management region. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | SWAT; Budyko; Darwinian; Newtonian; calibration |