Reproducing different types of changes in hydrological indicators with rainfall-runoff models

Hydrology Research

Carolina Massmann¹ 

[1] Institute for Hydrology and Water Management (HyWa), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, 1190 Vienna, Austria and Department of Civil Engineering, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK;

关键词: ecohydrology;    hydrologic change;    hydrological indicators;    indices of hydrological alteration;    model evaluation;    rainfall-runoff model;   

DOI  :  10.2166/nh.2020.073

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Hydrological indicators support analyses about the impact of climate and anthropogenic changes on riverine ecosystems. As these studies often rely on hydrological models for estimating the future value of the indicators, it is important to investigate how well, and under which conditions, we can replicate changes in the indicators. This study looks at these questions by investigating the performance that can be achieved depending on the objective function for calibrating the model, the direction of the change in the indicator, the magnitude of this change and the properties of the catchments. The results indicate that, in general, indicators describing the magnitude of discharge (monthly and annual) can be adequately estimated with hydrological models, but that there are difficulties when estimating the characteristics of flow pulses, flow reversals and timing variables. For some of these indicators, it is not even possible to correctly estimate the direction of large changes. The analysis showed further that these problems cannot be resolved by adjusting the calibrated parameters, but that the model structure is unsuitable for modelling these indicators.

【 授权许可】

Unknown