Joint Effects of the DEM Resolution and the Computational Cell Size on the Routing Methods in Hydrological Modelling

Water

Chong-Yu Xu¹  Lu Li²  Ran Huo³  Jingjing Li³  Jie Chen³  Haoyuan Zhao³  Hua Chen³ 

[1] Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, 0316 Oslo, Norway;NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Jahnebakken 5, 5007 Bergen, Norway;State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China;

关键词: DEM resolution;    computational cell size;    I-NRF routing method;    LRR routing method;    discharge simulation;   

DOI  :  10.3390/w14050797

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Natural disasters, including droughts and floods, have caused huge losses to mankind. Hydrological modelling is an indispensable tool for obtaining a better understanding of hydrological processes. The DEM-based routing methods, which are widely used in the distributed hydrological models, are sensitive to both the DEM resolution and the computational cell size. Too little work has been devoted to the joint effects of DEM resolution and computational cell size on the routing methods. This study aims to study the joint effects of those two factors on discharge simulation performance with two representative routing methods. The selected methods are the improved aggregated network-response function routing method (I-NRF) and the Liner-reservoir-routing method (LRR). Those two routing methods are combined with two runoff generation models to simulate the discharge. The discharge simulation performance is evaluated under the cross combination of four DEM resolutions (i.e., 90 m, 250 m, 500 m, and 1000 m) and fifty-six computational cell sizes (ranging from 5 arc-min to 60 arc-min). Eleven years of hydroclimatic data from the Jianxi basin (2000–2010) and the Shizhenjie basin (1983–1993) in China are used. The results show that the effects of the DEM resolution and the computational cell size are different on the I-NRF method and the LRR method. The computational cell size has nearly no influence on the performance of the I-NRF methods, while the DEM resolution does. On the contrary, the LRR discharge simulation performance decreases with oscillating values as the computational cell size increases, but is hardly affected by the DEM resolution. Furthermore, the joint effects of the DEM resolution and the computational cell size can be ignored for both routing methods. The results of this study will help to establish the appropriate DEM resolution, computational cell size, and routing method when researchers build hydrological models to predict future disasters.

【 授权许可】

Unknown