Sensitivity of Conceptual and Physically Based Hydrologic Models to Temporal and Spatial Rainfall Sampling
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 14, Issue 7
Abstract
This study investigated the impact of temporal and spatial sampling of rainfall on runoff predictions using a physically based [System Hydrologique European (MIKE SHE)] and conceptual [hydrologic modeling system (HMS)] hydrologic models. The numerical models were applied to Goodwin Creek watershed in northern Mississippi. The drainage area of Goodwin Creek is approximately . This study showed that MIKE SHE was more sensitive to both the spatial and the temporal samplings of rainfall than the HMS. The study also showed that errors introduced by coarse sampling scenarios can be significant. Overall, for this particular watershed size, increasing the rain gauge density from 1 to 2 resulted in the most significant improvement for both models. Similarly, a temporal sampling frequency beyond showed significant deterioration in the quality of the runoff prediction. The combined spatial–temporal sampling experiment showed that increasing the temporal sampling compensates, at least partially, for the loss of rainfall spatial information. It also showed that under poor temporal sampling frequency, the gain in model performance by increasing the spatial sampling density is negligible.
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Acknowledgments
This study was partially supported by the Army Research Office Grant No. USARODAAD19-00-1-0413 under the supervision of Dr. Russell Harmon and by the Louisiana Transportation Research Center Project No. UNSPECIFIED736-99-0918 under the supervision of Dr. Chester Wilmot.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 14 • Issue 7 • July 2009
Pages: 711 - 720
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Mar 31, 2006
Accepted: Feb 5, 2009
Published online: Jun 15, 2009
Published in print: Jul 2009
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