Comparison of direct statistical and indirect statistical-deterministic frameworks in downscaling river low-flow indices

ABSTRACT

This work explores the ability of two methodologies in downscaling hydrological indices characterizing the low flow regime of three salmon rivers in Eastern Canada: Moisie, Romaine and Ouelle. The selected indices describe four aspects of the low flow regime of these rivers: amplitude, frequency, variability and timing. The first methodology (direct downscaling) ascertains a direct link between large-scale atmospheric variables (the predictors) and low flow indices (the predictands). The second (indirect downscaling) involves downscaling precipitation and air temperature (local climate variables) that are introduced into a hydrological model to simulate flows. Synthetic flow time series are subsequently used to calculate the low flow indices. The statistical models used for downscaling low flow hydrological indices and local climate variables are: Sparse Bayesian Learning and Multiple Linear Regression. The results showed that direct downscaling using Sparse Bayesian Learning surpassed the other approaches with respect to goodness of fit and generalization ability.

Editor D. Koutsoyiannis; Associate editor K. Hamed     

Simulating and understanding effects of water level fluctuations on thermal regimes in Miyun Reservoir

ABSTRACT

Water temperature dynamics in a reservoir are affected by its bathymetry, climatic conditions and hydrological processes. Miyun Reservoir in China is a large and deep reservoir that experienced a large water level decline in 1999–2004 due to low rainfall and relatively high water supply to Beijing. To study changes of stratification characteristics in Miyun Reservoir from 1998 to 2011, the one-dimensional year-round lake model MINLAKE2010 was modified by adding a new selective withdraw module and a reservoir hydrological model. Simulation results under three scenarios demonstrated that the new MINLAKE2012 model accurately predicted daily water levels and temperature dynamics during the water level fluctuation period. The water level decline led to 7.6 and 3.8°C increases in the maximum and mean bottom temperatures and about 29 days reduction in the stratification days. These simulation results provide an insight into the thermal evolution of Miyun Reservoir during the planned future water filling process.

Editor D. Koutsoyiannis Associate editor M. Acreman     

Climate change impact on water resources availability: case study of the Llobregat River basin (Spain)

ABSTRACT

Climate change may have significant consequences for water resources availability and management at the basin scale. This is particularly true for areas already suffering from water stress, such as the Mediterranean area. This work focused on studying these impacts in the Llobregat basin supplying the Barcelona region. Several climate projections, adapted to the spatiotemporal resolution of the study, were combined with a daily hydrological model to estimate future water availability. Depending on the scenario and the time period, different assessment indicators such as reliability and resilience showed a future decrease in water resources (up to 40%), with drought periods becoming more frequent. An additional uncertainty analysis showed the high variability of the results (annual water availability ranging from 147 hm³/year to 274 hm³/year), thus making accurate projections difficult. Finally, the study illustrates how climate change could be taken into account to provide adaptive measures for the future.

Editor M.C. Acreman; Associate editor J. Thompson     

Investigation of the groundwater modelling component of the Integrated Water Flow Model (IWFM)

ABSTRACT

The Integrated Water Flow Model (IWFM), developed by the California Department of Water Resources, is an integrated hydrological model that simulates key flow processes including groundwater flows, streamflow, stream–aquifer interactions, rainfall–runoff and infiltration. It also simulates the agricultural water demand as a function of soil, crop and climatic characteristics, as well as irrigation practices, and allows the user to meet these demands through pumping and stream diversions. This study investigates the modelling performance of the groundwater module of IWFM using several hypothetical test problems that cover a wide range of settings and boundary conditions, by comparing the simulation results with analytical solutions, field and laboratory observations, or with results from MODFLOW outputs. The comparisons demonstrate that IWFM is capable of simulating various hydrological processes reliably.

EDITOR M.C. Acreman; ASSOCIATE EDITOR A. Efstratiadis     

Modelling forest snow processes with a new version of WaSiM

ABSTRACT

We present a new model extension for the Water balance Simulation Model, WaSiM, which features (i) snow interception and (ii) modified meteorological conditions under coniferous forest canopies, complementing recently developed model extensions for particular mountain hydrological processes. Two study areas in Austria and Germany are considered in this study. To supplement and constrain the modelling experiments with on-site observations, a network of terrestrial time-lapse cameras was set up in one of these catchments. The spatiotemporal patterns of snow depth inside the forest and at the adjacent open field sites were recorded along with snow interception dynamics. Comparison of observed and modelled snow cover and canopy interception indicates that the new version of WaSiM reliably reconstructs the variability of snow accumulation for both the forest and the open field. The Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency computed for selected runoff events in spring increases from ?0.68 to 0.71 and 0.21 to 0.87, respectively.     

雷达测雨误差及其对淮河流域径流模拟的影响

将雷达测雨数据与分布式水文模型相耦合进行径流过程模拟,分析雷达测雨误差及其径流过程模拟效果,研究雷达测雨误差对径流过程模拟的影响效应.在对淮河流域气象中心业务化的5种淮河流域雷达测雨数据进行误差分析的基础上,采用雷达测雨数据驱动HEC-HMS水文模型,模拟分析淮河息县水文站以上流域2007年7月1-10日强降雨集中期的径流过程.结果表明:利用雷达测雨数据的径流模拟结果与实测资料的模拟结果基本吻合,各种雷达测雨数据误差经过HEC-HMS水文模型传递后,误差明显减小.联合校准法对应的模拟效果最好,过程流量相对误差NBs'和洪峰流量相对误差Z'分别为-20.2%和-13.3%.     

A probabilistic performance‐based approach for mitigating the seismic pounding risk between adjacent buildings

Existing design procedures for determining the separation distance between adjacent buildings subjected to seismic pounding risk are based on approximations of the buildings' peak relative displacement. These procedures are characterized by unknown safety levels and thus are not suitable for use within a performance‐based earthquake engineering framework. This paper introduces an innovative reliability‐based methodology for the design of the separation distance between adjacent buildings. The proposed methodology, which is naturally integrated into modern performance‐based design procedures, provides the value of the separation distance corresponding to a target probability of pounding during the design life of the buildings. It recasts the inverse reliability problem of the determination of the design separation distance as a zero‐finding problem and involves the use of analytical techniques in order to evaluate the statistics of the dynamic response of the buildings. Both uncertainty in the seismic intensity and record‐to‐record variability are taken into account. The proposed methodology is applied to several different buildings modeled as linear elastic single‐degree‐of‐freedom (SDOF) and multi‐degree‐of‐freedom (MDOF) systems, as well as SDOF nonlinear hysteretic systems. The design separation distances obtained are compared with the corresponding estimates that are based on several response combination rules suggested in the seismic design codes and in the literature. In contrast to current seismic code design procedures, the newly proposed methodology provides consistent safety levels for different building properties and different seismic hazard conditions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Combined analysis of precipitation and water deficit for drought hazard assessment

Abstract

The combined analysis of precipitation and water scarcity was done with the use of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Runoff Index (SRI), developed as a monthly, two-variable SPI-SRI indicator to identify different classes of hydrometeorological conditions. Stochastic analysis of a long-term time series (1966–2005) of monthly SPI-SRI indicator values was performed using a first-order Markov chain model. This provided characteristics of regional features of drought formation, evolution and persistence, as well as tools for statistical long-term drought hazard prediction. The study was carried out on two subbasins of the Odra River (Poland) of different orography and land use: the mountainous Nysa K?odzka basin and the lowland, agricultural Prosna basin. Classification obtained with the SPI-SRI indicator was compared with the output from the NIZOWKA model that provided identification of hydrological drought events including drought duration and deficit volume. Severe and long-duration droughts corresponded to SPI-SRI Class 3 (dry meteorological and dry hydrological), while severe but short-term droughts (lasting less than 30 days) corresponded to SPI-SRI Class 4 (wet meteorological and dry hydrological). The results confirm that, in Poland, meteorologically dry conditions often shift to hydrologically dry conditions within the same month, droughts rarely last longer than 2 months and two separate drought events can be observed within the same year.     

The influence of local topography for wind direction on Mars: two examples of dune fields in crater basins

In this work, we perform an analysis of large dark dunes within Moreux Crater and Herschel Crater on Mars using High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and Context Camera (CTX) data sets. These data allow us to conduct a detailed analysis of dune morphology and slip faces, concluding that the studied dune fields are influenced by topographically‐controlled complex wind directions. Our morphological analysis reveals that inside Moreux Crater in particular, the topographic setting dominates the wind flow direction, leading to the development of a sand transport pathway encircling the central peak of the crater. The dune fields in Herschel Crater are also affected by winds controlled by variable topography as suggested by the presence of complex dunes and dune fields. Our analysis indicate that the studied dune systems is not the result of paleo‐wind regimes. Furthermore, we perform thermal inertia measurements using thermal emission spectrometer (TES) data, which indicate that the studied dune fields consist of medium sand 250–500 µm in diameter. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial scale effect on the upper soil effective parameters of a distributed hydrological model

Nonlinear dynamics and spatial variability in hydrological systems make the formulation of scaling theories difficult. Therefore, the development of knowledge related to scale effects, scaling techniques, parameterization and linkages of parameters across scales is highly relevant. The main purpose of this work is to analyse the spatial effect of the static storage capacity parameter H_u and the saturated hydraulic conductivity parameter k_s from microscale (sub‐grid level) to mesoscale (grid level) and its implication to the definition of an optimum cell size. These two parameters describe the upper soil water characteristics in the infiltration process conceptualization of the TETIS hydrological model. At microscale, the spatial heterogeneity of H_u and k_s was obtained generating random parameter fields through probability distribution functions and a spatial dependence model with pre‐established correlation lengths. The effective parameters at mesoscale were calculated by solving the inverse problem for each parameter field. Results indicate that the adopted inverse formulation allows transferring the nonlinearity of the system from microscale to the mesoscale via non‐stationary effective parameters. Their values at each cell and time step are in the range of zero to the mean value of the parameter at microscale. The stochastic simulations showed that the variance of the estimated effective parameters decreases when the ratio between mesoscale cell size and correlation length at microscale increases. For a ratio greater than 1, we found cell sizes having the characteristics of a representative elementary area (REA); in such case, the microscale variability pattern did not affect the system response at mesoscale. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.