Validation of the Hydrological Processes in a Hydrological Model
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 11, Issue 5
Abstract
Hydrological models are often required to model watersheds where the conditions change over time. Calibration and validation of these models is a difficult process that requires validation of each of the major hydrological processes within the model. This paper presents the calibration, validation, and sensitivity analysis of the WATFLOOD hydrological model. The calibration process is usually based on streamflow and may involve an implicit validation of the hydrological processes when the internal state variables are monitored to ensure that the model operates realistically. This paper presents explicit validations of several internal state variables (soil moisture, evaporation, snow accumulation and snowmelt, and groundwater flow) and the statistical characteristics of the streamflow. The WATFLOOD model is shown to track each of these variables with sufficient accuracy for operational use of the model. In addition, several behavioral sensitivity checks are presented to show that the model behaves in a realistic manner. This paper provides a broadly based methodology for calibration and validation of a distributed hydrological model.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank B.C. Hydro for providing permission to use these data for research, and the University of Waterloo for its assistance with computing resources. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada and Environment Canada funded this work. Furthermore, suggestions made by Graham Lang and Janet Wong of B.C. Hydro helped to improve some aspects of this paper. Shari Carlaw kindly shared her work on the validation of the soil moisture component of WATFLOOD. The authors are grateful for these contributions.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 11 • Issue 5 • September 2006
Pages: 451 - 463
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 25, 2002
Accepted: May 9, 2005
Published online: Sep 1, 2006
Published in print: Sep 2006
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