Threshold of Basin Discretization Levels for HSPF Simulations with NEXRAD Inputs
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19, Issue 7
Abstract
Basin discretization effects in HSPF simulations were investigated to provide useful insights for hydrologists to determine the proper catchment size for basin scale modeling. The next generation radar (NEXRAD) rainfall estimates were incorporated into the HSPF modeling environment to generate streamflows at various catchments sizes ranging from 37 to . This research aims to identify how HSPF model performance can be improved by a marginal level of spatial discretization in rainfall-runoff modeling. Parameter estimation software was used for model calibration using data periods from 1998 to 2000. All simulations at different discretization levels above approximately 23% of the basin size resulted in good statistical values, with correlation coefficients of 0.82–0.87 and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficients of 0.61–0.73. However, the modeling performances of HSPF are limited when the catchment size reaches below 8.18% of the basin size, regardless of automatic calibration efforts. The result indicates that basin discretization at finer scales does not necessarily improve HSPF simulation results with NEXRAD inputs.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge Idaho Water Resources Research Institute (IWRRI) providing USGS 104B grant money for this study. Partial funding support for Jungjin Kim and Jae H. Ryu is also made from the NSF Idaho EPSCoR program (Award Number: EPS-0814387) and NASA (Award Number: NNX08AL94G), respectively.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19 • Issue 7 • July 2014
Pages: 1401 - 1412
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 17, 2013
Accepted: Oct 2, 2013
Published online: Oct 4, 2013
Discussion open until: Mar 4, 2014
Published in print: Jul 1, 2014
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