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Risley, J., and Hay, L.E., 2006, eds. Joint 8th Federal Interagency Sedimentation Conference and 3rd Federal Interagency Hydrologic Modeling Conference, April 2-6, 2006, Reno, Nevada.
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
In 1983, a snowmelt energy budget study was initiated by the U.S. Geological Survey on a small watershed near Rabbit Ears Pass, Colorado, to better understand snowmelt processes. The study included data collection from hydrological and meteorological instrumentation. Interest in long term, high-altitude meteorological sites has increased recently due to the increased awareness of global climate change. The meteorological data collected near Rabbit Ears Pass may aid researchers involved in global climate change studies. Meteorological data from 1984 to 2008 are presented.
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
A modular approach to model design and construction provides a flexible framework in which to focus the multidisciplinary research and operational efforts needed to facilitate the development, selection, and application of the most robust distributed modelling methods. A variety of modular approaches have been developed, but with little consideration for compatibility among systems and concepts. Several systems are proprietary, limiting any user interaction. The US Geological Survey modular modelling system (MMS) is a modular modelling framework that uses an open source software approach to enable all members of the scientific community to address collaboratively the many complex issues associated with the design,...
In this chapter we investigate the motivation behind the development of modelling frameworks that explicitly target the environmental domain. Despite many commercial and industrial-strength frameworks being available, we claim that there is a definite niche for environmental-specific frameworks. We first introduce a general definition of what is an environmental integrated modelling framework, leading to an outline of the requirements for a generic software architecture for such frameworks. This identifies the need for a knowledge layer to support the modelling layer and an experimentation layer to support the execution of models. The chapter then focuses on the themes of knowledge representation, model management...
This paper reports on a project to compare predictions from a range of catchment models applied to a mesoscale river basin in central Germany and to assess various ensemble predictions of catchment streamflow. The models encompass a large range in inherent complexity and input requirements. In approximate order of decreasing complexity, they are DHSVM, MIKE-SHE, TOPLATS, WASIM-ETH, SWAT, PRMS, SLURP, HBV, LASCAM and IHACRES. The models are calibrated twice using different sets of input data. The two predictions from each model are then combined by simple averaging to produce a single-model ensemble. The 10 resulting single-model ensembles are combined in various ways to produce multi-model ensemble predictions....
Umemoto, M., Hay, L.E., Markstrom, S.L., and Leavesley, G.H., 2006, Luca: a wizard style GUI for easy and systematic multi-objective, step-wise calibration of Hydrologic models. Joint 8th Federal Interagency Sedimentation Conference abd 3rd Federal Interagency Hydrologic Modeling Conference, April 2-6, 2006, Reno, Nevada.
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Integrated basin management is concerned with the interactions of physical, ecological, economic, and social systems as they affect the operation, planning, and policy making processes inherent in the management of land and water resources. Systems of integrated hydrological, chemical, biological, ecological, and socioeconomic models are typically used to assess the effects of proposed management alternatives on basin resources, or to manage basin resources in real time. Water is a common thread linking many of the components among these models. The ability to adequately simulate rainfall-runoff processes and their interactions with processes related to other system components significantly affects the integrated...
This paper examines an archive containing over 40 years of 8-day atmospheric forecasts over the contiguous United States from the NCEP reanalysis project to assess the possibilities for using medium-range numerical weather prediction model output for predictions of streamflow. This analysis shows the biases in the NCEP forecasts to be quite extreme. In many regions, systematic precipitation biases exceed 100% of the mean, with temperature biases exceeding 3??C. In some locations, biases are even higher. The accuracy of NCEP precipitation and 2-m maximum temperature forecasts is computed by interpolating the NCEP model output for each forecast day to the location of each station in the NWS cooperative network and...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Distributed hydrologic models typically require spatial estimates of precipitation interpolated from sparsely located observational points to the specific grid points. We compare and contrast the performance of regression-based statistical methods for the spatial estimation of precipitation in two hydrologically different basins and confirmed that widely used regression-based estimation schemes fail to describe the realistic spatial variability of daily precipitation field. The methods assessed are: (1) inverse distance weighted average; (2) multiple linear regression (MLR); (3) climatological MLR; and (4) locally weighted polynomial regression (LWP). In order to improve the performance of the interpolations, the...
A number of statistical methods that are used to provide local-scale ensemble forecasts of precipitation and temperature do not contain realistic spatial covariability between neighboring stations or realistic temporal persistence for subsequent forecast lead times. To demonstrate this point, output from a global-scale numerical weather prediction model is used in a stepwise multiple linear regression approach to downscale precipitation and temperature to individual stations located in and around four study basins in the United States. Output from the forecast model is downscaled for lead times up to 14 days. Residuals in the regression equation are modeled stochastically to provide 100 ensemble forecasts. The precipitation...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Ground water occurrence, movement, and its contribution to streamflow were investigated in Loch Vale, an alpine catchment in the Front Range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Hydrogeomorphologic mapping, seismic refraction measurements, and porosity and permeability estimates indicate that talus slopes are the primary ground water reservoir, with a maximum storage capacity that is equal to, or greater than, total annual discharge from the basin (5.4 ± 0.8 × 106 m3). Although snowmelt and glacial melt provide the majority of annual water flux to the basin, tracer tests and gauging along a stream transect indicate that ground water flowing from talus can account for ≥75% of streamflow during storms and the winter base...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
This paper introduces the project on ‘Assessing the impact of land use change on hydrology by ensemble modeling (LUCHEM)’ that aims at investigating the envelope of predictions on changes in hydrological fluxes due to land use change. As part of a series of four papers, this paper outlines the motivation and setup of LUCHEM, and presents a model intercomparison for the present-day simulation results. Such an intercomparison provides a valuable basis to investigate the effects of different model structures on model predictions and paves the ground for the analysis of the performance of multi-model ensembles and the reliability of the scenario predictions in companion papers. In this study, we applied a set of 10...
Lago Loi??za impounded in 1953 to supply San Juan, Puerto Rico, with drinking water; by 1994, it had lost 47% of its capacity. To characterize sedimentation in Lago Loi??za, a study combining land-use history, hillslope erosion rates, and subbasin sediment yields was conducted. Sedimentation rates during the early part of the reservoir‘s operation (1953-1963) were slightly higher than the rates during 1964-1990. In the early history of the reservoir, cropland comprised 48% of the basin and erosion rates were high. Following economic shifts during the 1960s, cropland was abandoned and replaced by forest, which increased from 7.6% in 1950 to 20.6% in 1987. These land-use changes follow a pattern similar to the northeastern...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
This study presents a multiple-objective, step-wise, automated procedure for hydrologic model calibration in the Sprague River, a mountainous watershed in the Upper Klamath Basin. The procedure includes the sequential calibration of a distributed-hydrologic model's simulation of: (1) solar radiation, (2) potential evapotranspiration, (3) annual water balance; (4) snow-covered area; and (5) components of daily runoff. Measured snow-covered area data for model calibration was processed for the Sprague River basin from the MODIS/Terra Snow Cover 5-Min L2 Swath 500m. This data extends from February 24, 2000 to present. The surface hydrology of the Sprague River basin is dominated by snowmelt runoff, making snow-covered...