Continuous Hydrologic Modeling of Snow-Affected Watersheds in the Great Lakes Basin Using HEC-HMS
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 1
Abstract
To reproduce historical stream flows, climate and land-use change studies require watershed models with physically based parameters, rather than empirical models that are simply calibrated. With this in mind, soil moisture accounting and the temperature index (degree-day) snowmelt models embodied in the Hydrologic Engineering Center’s hydrologic modeling system (HEC-HMS) are applied to three Great Lakes watersheds—Kalamazoo, Maumee, and St. Louis—with different climatic and land-use characteristics. Watershed and subwatershed models are calibrated and validated on a daily time step using gauge precipitation measurements, observed snow water equivalent data, and physically based parameters estimated using geospatial databases. Results are compared with area-scaled outputs from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) large basin runoff model (LBRM) for historical conditions. The results show modest improvements resulting from the increased spatial resolution of the HEC-HMS models, in addition to the benefits of the more process-based snow algorithm in HEC-HMS, particularly for the snow-dominated St. Louis watershed. However, both LBRM and HEC-HMS models had difficulty reproducing peaks in late winter and early spring runoff, and discrepancies could not be attributed to any systematic errors in the snowmelt models.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, grant number CMMI-0725636. In addition, we acknowledge the help of T. Hunter of GLERL, NOAA; C. Olheiser of NORHSC, NOAA for providing data and advice; S. Daly of USACE, ERDC/CRREL for guidance and suggestions; S. Rutkowski of Michigan Tech for data compilation; A. Mayer, M. Ballard LaBeau, A. Mirchi, and B. Barkdoll, of Michigan Tech; B. Lofgren, A. Gronewold of GLERL, NOAA and C. DeMarchi of Case Western University for feedback and suggestions; the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped improve the paper; and the Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystem Research’s Great Lakes Summer Fellowship Program, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan. Opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors.
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18 • Issue 1 • January 2013
Pages: 29 - 39
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© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 27, 2011
Accepted: Jan 13, 2012
Published online: Sep 6, 2012
Published in print: Jan 1, 2013
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