| Title: | Sub-daily simulation of mountain flood processes based on the modified Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model |
| Authors: | Duan, Y., F. Meng, T. Liu, Y. Huang, M. Luo, W. Xing and P. De Maeyer |
| Year: | 2019 |
| Journal: | International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health |
| Volume (Issue): | 16(17) |
| Pages: | |
| Article ID: | 3118 |
| DOI: | 10.3390/ijerph16173118 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT (modified) |
| Broad Application Category: | hydrologic only |
| Primary Application Category: | sub-daily hydrologic and/or pollutant processes |
| Secondary Application Category: | snowmelt, frozen soil and/or glacier melt processes |
| Watershed Description: | 5,600 km^2 Tizinafu River, located in the southwest part of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in northwest China. |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | Floods not only provide a large amount of water resources, but they also cause serious disasters. Although there have been numerous hydrological studies on flood processes, most of these investigations were based on rainfall-type floods in plain areas. Few studies have examined high temporal resolution snowmelt floods in high-altitude mountainous areas. The Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model is a typical semi-distributed, hydrological model widely used in runoff and water quality simulations. The degree-day factor method used in SWAT utilizes only the average daily temperature as the criterion of snow melting and ignores the influence of accumulated temperature. Therefore, the influence of accumulated temperature on snowmelt was added by increasing the discriminating conditions of rain and snow, making that more suitable for the simulation of snowmelt processes in high-altitude mountainous areas. On the basis of the daily scale, the simulation of the flood process was modeled on an hourly scale. This research compared the results before and after the modification and revealed that the peak error decreased by 77% and the time error was reduced from ±11 h to ±1 h. This study provides an important reference for flood simulation and forecasting in mountainous areas. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | Accumulated temperature (AT); Degree-day factor; Flood processes; SWAT; Sub-daily |