| Title: | Application of SWAT Model with a modified groundwater module to the semi-arid Hailiutu River Catchment, northwest China |
| Authors: | Shao, G., D. Zhang, Y. Guan, Y. Xie and F. Huang |
| Year: | 2019 |
| Journal: | Sustainability |
| Volume (Issue): | 11(7) |
| Pages: | |
| Article ID: | 2031 |
| DOI: | 10.3390/su11072031 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT-MG & SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | hydrologic only |
| Primary Application Category: | groundwater and/or soil water impacts |
| Secondary Application Category: | model and/or data comparison |
| Watershed Description: | 2,500 km^2 Hailiutu River, a tributary of the Wuding River (and the larger Yellow River system) located in north central China. |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | In the original soil and water assessment Tool (SWAT) model (SWAT-O), the contributions
of shallow aquifers and deep aquifers to streamflow are simulated using the linear reservoir method.
The movement of groundwater was limited in the hydrological response unit which is a minimum
calculation unit in the SWAT. However, this computational method may not be suitable for the
areas where a groundwater system is complicated, and the river is predominately recharged by
groundwater. In this paper, we proposed an enhanced groundwater module which divides shallow
aquifers into upper and lower aquifers, integrates all the deep aquifers of a sub-basin into a regional
aquifer, and simulates interactive water amount between lower aquifer and deep aquifer using water
depth difference. The modified groundwater module was introduced to the original SWAT model,
hereby referred to as SWAT-MG. The SWAT-MG and SWAT-O models were applied to the Hailiutu
River catchment, which is a semi-arid wind sandy grass shoal catchment. Results showed that both
models underestimated streamflow in peak flow, while the simulated streamflow of SWAT-MG was
closer the observed values than that of SWAT-O. Three evaluation criteria (NSE, RSR, PBIAS) were
applied to evaluate the performance of the models and the results showed that SWAT-MG had a
better performance than SWAT-O. The baseflow index of Hailiutu River which was calculated by
the results of SWAT-MG was 96.78%, which means the streamflow is predominately recharged by
groundwater, and this conforms to the actual situation of Hailiutu River catchment. This indicates
that a SWAT model with a modified groundwater module could better represent the groundwater
flow behavior in the study area. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | SWAT; aquifer; groundwater; streamflow |