Predicting River Discharge Rates in California Watersheds of the Russian River and Other North Coast River Basins
Abstract
This study describes applications of the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) ecosystem model coupled with a surface hydrologic routing scheme previously called the Hydrological Routing Algorithm (HYDRA) to model river discharge rates across selected California watersheds in the North Coast region of the state. For mountainous areas, CASA-HYDRA snowmelt algorithms have been modified with equations from the USDA Snowmelt Runoff Model (SRM), which has been refined to predict daily stream flow in mountain basins where snowmelt is a notable runoff factor. Results show that, based on CASA-HYDRA model predictions of monthly flow rates across the ten complete stream gauges in the Russian River basin from 2000 to 2007, the typical model-to-measurement correlation between monthly river flow rates was R squared = 0.76 (with E = 0.61). Similar validation results for seasonal and annual flow predictions have been developed for numerous coastal redwood forest watersheds where streams support critical wild fisheries habitat. Future model applications for land cover and climate change in northern California’s coastal watersheds are outlined, with emphasis on impacts of municipal and agricultural water demands.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFM.H31F1060S
- Keywords:
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- 1847 HYDROLOGY / Modeling