Paper Info
Title
Incorporating land-use changes and surface-groundwater interactions in a simple catchment water yield model.
Abstract
Pressure on limited water resources and the environment requires better understanding of how landscape change impacts river flow. Rainfall-runoff models have traditionally focused on estimating total river flows with less emphasis on modelling the groundwater component or the consequences of different land-use change scenarios. In this paper, we present the GWlag model, a water-generation model that predicts river flows with explicit accounting of the impacts of catchment land-use change and surface-groundwater interactions. The paper firstly describes the theory that underpins the model and its calibration then presents a case study application in the Tarcutta Creek catchment of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. The case study aims at: (i) demonstrating the ability of the model to predict daily river flows; (ii) modelling the impacts of hypothetical plantation forestry expansions on river flows; and (iii) showing the impacts of reduced recharge on the low-flow regime using three indices, namely, Q"9"0/Q"5"0 (where Q"n refers to nth percentile flow), slope of low-flow part of flow duration curve, and % of zero-flow days. Results showed that predicted flows agreed favourably to those observed at the gauge especially during low-flow conditions. The hypothetical plantation expansion from 32% to 87% of the catchment area has resulted in reductions of 48% and 32%, in Q"5"0 and Q"2"0, respectively. The low-flow indices demonstrated the great sensitivity of low flow to reductions in recharge with the trend of the low-flow response changing to non-linear for recharge reductions beyond 10%. GWlag daily river flow predictions compared favourably to those obtained from four other rainfall-runoff models in terms of the Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency (E). However, GWlag produced the highest E-value for log-transformed flows thus highlighting the model's superior predictive capability during low-flow conditions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1016/j.envsoft.2012.05.005
Environmental Modelling and Software
Keywords
Field
DocType
daily river flow,landscape change impacts river,incorporating land-use change,river flow,nash-sutcliffe model efficiency,rainfall-runoff model,low-flow index,low-flow part,simple catchment water yield,surface-groundwater interaction,gwlag model,low-flow condition,gwlag daily river flow,catchment hydrology,perfect
Streamflow,Catchment area,Drainage basin,Groundwater,Hydrology,Computer science,Water resources,Groundwater recharge,Structural basin,Catchment hydrology
Journal
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
38
1364-8152
6
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.66
13
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mat Gilfedder1162.66
D. W. Rassam2142.60
M. P. Stenson360.66
I. D. Jolly460.66
G. R. Walker560.66
M. Littleboy660.66