Abstract. Quantifying how vegetation mediates water partitioning at different spatialand temporal scales in complex, managed catchments is fundamental forlong-term sustainable land and water management. Estimations fromecohydrological models conceptualising how vegetation regulates theinterrelationships between evapotranspiration losses, catchment water storage dynamics, and recharge and runoff fluxes are needed to assess water availability for a range of ecosystem services and evaluate how these might change under increasing extreme events, such as droughts. Currently, the feedback mechanisms between water and mosaics of different vegetation and land cover are not well understood across spatial scales, and the effects of different scaleson the skill of ecohydrological models needs to be clarified. We used thetracer-aided ecohydrological model EcH2O-iso in an intensively monitored 66 km2 mixed land use catchment in northeastern Germany to quantify water flux–storage–age interactions at four model grid resolutions (250, 500, 750, and 1000 m). This used a fusion of field (including precipitation, soil water, groundwater, and stream isotopes) and remote sensing data in the calibration. Multicriteria calibration across the catchment at each resolution revealed some differences in the estimation of fluxes, storages, and water ages. In general, model sensitivity decreased and uncertainty increased with coarser model resolutions. Larger grids were unable to replicate observed streamflow andmore »
DRYP 1.0: a parsimonious hydrological model of DRYland Partitioning of the water balance
Abstract. Dryland regions are characterised by water scarcity and are facingmajor challenges under climate change. One difficulty is anticipating howrainfall will be partitioned into evaporative losses, groundwater, soilmoisture, and runoff (the water balance) in the future, which has importantimplications for water resources and dryland ecosystems. However, in orderto effectively estimate the water balance, hydrological models in drylandsneed to capture the key processes at the appropriate spatio-temporal scales.These include spatially restricted and temporally brief rainfall, highevaporation rates, transmission losses, and focused groundwater recharge.Lack of available input and evaluation data and the high computational costsof explicit representation of ephemeral surface–groundwater interactionsrestrict the usefulness of most hydrological models in these environments.Therefore, here we have developed a parsimonious distributed hydrologicalmodel for DRYland Partitioning (DRYP). The DRYP model incorporates the keyprocesses of water partitioning in dryland regions with limited datarequirements, and we tested it in the data-rich Walnut Gulch ExperimentalWatershed against measurements of streamflow, soil moisture, andevapotranspiration. Overall, DRYP showed skill in quantifying the maincomponents of the dryland water balance including monthly observations ofstreamflow (Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency, NSE, ∼ 0.7),evapotranspiration (NSE > 0.6), and soil moisture (NSE ∼ 0.7). The model showed that evapotranspiration consumes > 90 % of the total precipitation input to the catchment andthat < 1 % leaves the catchment as streamflow. Greater than more »
- Award ID(s):
- 1700555
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10384497
- Journal Name:
- Geoscientific Model Development
- Volume:
- 14
- Issue:
- 11
- Page Range or eLocation-ID:
- 6893 to 6917
- ISSN:
- 1991-9603
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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