Hydrologic Modeling of an Eastern Pennsylvania Watershed with NEXRAD and Rain Gauge Data
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 11, Issue 6
Abstract
This paper applies the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to model the hydrology in the Pocono Creek watershed located in Monroe County, Pa. The calibrated model will be used in a subsequent study to examine the impact of population growth and rapid urbanization in the watershed on the base flow and peak runoff. Of particular interest in this paper is the exploration of potential use of Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) technology as an alternative source of precipitation data to the conventional surface rain gauges. NEXRAD estimated areal average precipitations are shown to compare well with the gauge measured ones at two climate stations in the study area. Investigation of the spatially distributed NEXRAD precipitation estimates revealed that average annual precipitation can vary spatially as much as 12% in the Pocono Creek watershed. The SWAT model is calibrated and validated for monthly stream flow, base flow, and surface runoff. Hydrographs generated from both gauge and NEXRAD driven model simulations compared well with observed flow hydrographs. Although little effort is spent on daily calibration, model simulations and observed flows were in good agreement at the daily scale as well. Almost similar model efficiency statistics, i.e., mass balance error (MBE), coefficient of determination , and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency , were obtained during the calibration period in the gauge and NEXRAD driven simulations. In the validation period, NEXRAD simulations generated higher model efficiencies at the monthly scale. On the other hand, simulations with gauge precipitations resulted in slightly better model efficiencies at the daily time scale. The spatial representation of precipitation did not contribute much to model performance when stream flow at the watershed outlet was the required output. However, the use of NEXRAD technology appears to offer a promising source of precipitation data in addition to currently existing surface gauge measurements. Discussions on new directions in radar-rainfall technology are provided.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, through its Office of Research and Development, funded the research described here through in-house efforts and in part by an appointment to the Postgraduate Research Program at the National Risk Management Research Laboratory, administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education through an interagency agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It has not been subjected to Agency review and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency, and no official endorsement should be inferred. We deeply appreciate David Kitzmiller from the National Weather Service (NWS) for all his help with the NEXRAD data and Karen Reavy of the Delaware River Basin Commission for her assistance with geographic information system (GIS) data. We are also thankful to Dr. Yu Zhang for his support in PERL scripting.
References
Arnold, J. G., and Allen, P. M. (1999). “Automated methods for estimating base flow and ground water recharge from streamflow records.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 35(2), 411–424.
Arnold, J. G., Allen, P. M., Muttiah, R., and Bernhardt, G. (1995). “Automated base flow separation and recession analysis techniques.” Ground Water, 33(6), 1010–1018.
Bedient, P. B., Anthony, H., Benavides, J. A., and Vieux, B. E. (2003). “Radar-based flood warning system applied to Tropical Storm Allison.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 8(6), 308–318.
Bedient, P. B., Hoblit, B. C., Gladwell, D. C., and Vieux, B. E. (2000). “NEXRAD radar for flood prediction in Houston.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 5(3), 269–277.
Carpenter, T. M., Georgakakos, K. P., and Sperfslagea, J. A. (2001). “On the parametric and NEXRAD-radar sensitivities of a distributed hydrologic model suitable for operational use.” J. Hydrol., 253, 169–193.
Di Luzio, M., and Arnold, J. G. (2004). “Formulation of a hybrid calibration approach for a physically based distributed model with NEXRAD data input.” J. Hydrol., 298, 136–154.
Di Luzio, M., Srinivasan, R., Arnold, J. G., and Neitsch, S. L. (2002). “ArcView interface for SWAT2000, user’s guide.” TWRI Rep. TR-193, Texas Water Resources Institute, College Station, Tex.
Eckhardt, K., and Arnold, J. G. (2001). “Automated calibration of a distributed catchment model.” J. Hydrol., 251, 103–109.
Fohrer, N., Möller, D., and Steiner, N. (2002). “An interdisciplinary modeling approach to evaluate the effects of land use change.” Phys. Chem. Earth, Part B, 27, 655–662.
Green, W. H., and Ampt, G. A. (1911). “Studies on soil physics. 1: The flow of air and water through soils.” J. Agric. Sci., 4, 11–24.
Harrison, D. L., Driscoll, S. J., and Kitchen, M. (2000). “Improving precipitation estimates from weather radar using quality control and correction techniques.” Meteorol. Appl., 6, 135–144.
Jayakrishnan, R., Srinivasan, R., Santhi, C., and Arnold, J. G. (2005). “Advances in the application of the SWAT model for water resources management.” Hydrolog. Process., 19, 749–762.
Mukhopadhyay, B., Cornelius, J., and Zehner, W. (2003). “Application of kinematic wave theory for predicting flash hazards on coupled alluvial fan—Piedmont plain landforms.” Hydrolog. Process., 17, 839–868.
Muleta, M. K., and Nicklow, J. W. (2005). “Sensitivity and uncertainty analysis coupled with automatic calibration for a distributed watershed model.” J. Hydrol., 306, 127–145.
Nash, J. E., and Sutcliffe, J. V. (1970). “River flow forecasting through conceptual models. Part 1: A discussion of principles.” J. Hydrol., 10, 282–290.
Neary, V. S., Habib, E., and Fleming, M. (2004). “Hydrologic modeling with NEXRAD precipitation in middle Tennessee.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 9(5), 339–349.
Neitsch, S. L., Arnold, J. G., Kiniry, J. R., Williams, J. R., and King, K. W. (2002a). “Soil and water assessment tool theoretical documentation, version 2000.” TWRI Rep. TR-191, Texas Water Resources Institute, College Station, Tex.
Neitsch, S. L., Arnold, J. G., Kiniry, J. R., Williams, J. R., and King, K. W. (2002b). “Soil and water assessment tool user’s manual, version 2000.” TWRI Rep. TR-192, Texas Water Resources Institute, College Station, Tex.
Pocono Creek Pilot Project. (2001). “Geology, geomorphology, geohydrology, and surface water hydrology of the Pocono Creek Basin.” Draft Technical Rep., ⟨http://www.state.ni.us/drbc/pocono_geology.PDF⟩ (Jan. 30, 2006).
Rallison, R. E., and Miller, N. (1981). “Past, present, and future SCS runoff procedure.” Rainfall runoff relationship, V. P. Singh, ed., Water Resources, Littleton, Colo., 353–364.
Reed, S., et al. (2004). “Overall distributed model inter-comparison project results.” J. Hydrol., 298, 27–60.
Reed, S. M., and Maidment, D. R. (1999). “Coordinate transformations for using NEXRAD data in GIS-based hydrologic modeling.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 4(2), 174–182.
Santhi, C., Arnold, J. G., Williams, J. R., Dugas, W. A., Srinivasan, R., and Hauck, L. M. (2001). “Validation of the SWAT model on a large river basin with point and nonpoint sources.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 37(5), 1169–1188.
Smith, M. B., et al. (2004). “The distributed model intercomparison project (DMIP): Motivation and experiment design.” J. Hydrol., 298, 4–26.
Sophocleous, M., and Perkins, S. M. (2000). “Methodology and application of combined watershed and ground-water models in Kansas.” J. Hydrol., 236, 185–201.
Sorooshian, S., Gupta, V. K., and Fulton, J. L. (1983). “Evaluation of maximum likelihood parameter estimation techniques for conceptual rainfall-runoff models: Influence of calibration data variability and length on model credibility.” Water Resour. Res., 19(1), 251–259.
Tripathi, M. P., Panda, R. K., Raghuwanshi, N. S., and Singh, R. (2004). “Hydrological modeling of a small watershed using generated rainfall in the soil and water assessment tool model.” Hydrolog. Process., 18, 1811–1821.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Soil Conservation Service. (1972). “Section 4: Hydrology.” National engineering handbook, Washington, D.C.
Williams, J. R. (1969). “Flood routing with variable travel time or variable storage coefficients.” Trans. ASAE, 12(1), 100–103.
Xie, H., Zhou, X., Vivoni, E. R., Hendricks, J. M. H., and Small, E. E. (2005). “GIS-based NEXRAD Stage III precipitation database: Automated approaches for data processing and visualization.” Comput. Geosci., 31, 65–76.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 28, 2005
Accepted: Apr 4, 2006
Published online: Nov 1, 2006
Published in print: Nov 2006
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.