Developing a Parsimonious Distributed Land Surface-Subsurface Hydrological Model
Abstract
A hydrological model is a simplified representation of the water cycle. A model helps people to understand, predict, and manage water resources. The scope and complexity of the model depend on the modelling goal, availability of required inputs, and computational resources. A wide variety of different hydrologic models exist, which are from simplistic to complex. Complex models are often computationally very expensive, hampering robust calibration, sensitivity evaluation, and uncertainty analysis. The purpose of this study was to develop a parsimonious distributed land surface-subsurface hydrological model for the UK. There are many well-performed hydrological models. But currently, there is no coupled model of a land surface model and a subsurface model for the UK. There are also many excellent land surface models for the UK. However, large-scale land surface models can be complicated due to the large number of parameters. A parsimonious land surface model based on a simple water content balance equation is developed and coupled to the subsurface model. We can then focus on other related hydrology research questions by applying the parsimonious coupled model.
The parsimonious model we are developing is a combination of the land surface model and a groundwater model that adopts a two-dimensional representation of groundwater flow. The land surface model is based on a soil water balance model, simulating land surface hydrological processes. The proposed parameterization is calibrated at the point scale using observed soil moisture profile data and converted recharge data. This is achieved by randomly sampling the parameters within their range and widely running the model to minimize the difference between observed and simulated soil moisture. The coupled model will be useful for robust model calibration, sensitivity tests, and uncertainty analysis.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022AGUFM.H42D1280L