Abstract
Hydrological models have been used to analyze the hydrological processes and availability of water in different watersheds. It is one of the most significant aspects of water resources management and development programme to use different hydrological models for predicting the flow of river basins. Calibration and validation of the developed hydrological model is also important so that the model users can be confident while estimating the flow of the watershed. In this study, a semi-distributed hydrological model was developed for 0.176 million km2 Upper Blue Nile river basin using Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The applicability of SWAT was assessed for rainfall- runoff simulation in Upper Blue Nile basin. The model was calibrated and validated using 10 years of discharge data. Model calibration and sensitivity analysis were performed with sequential uncertainty fitting (SUFI-2), which is one of the programs interfaced with SWAT, in the package SWAT-CUP. The most and least sensitive parameters were CN2 (curve number) and GW_DELAY (ground water delay time) respectively. Performance of the model was evaluated based on Nash Sutcliff Efficiency (NSE) and Coefficient of Determination (R2) which were 0.71 and 0.66 respectively for calibration. Overall, the model demonstrated good performance in producing the patterns and trend of the observed discharge which assures the suitability of the SWAT model for future scenario analysis. Uncertainty analysis of the SWAT model of upper Blue Nile basin, consideration of other parameters and incorporating more flow data from other stations within the basin is recommended for future studies.
Highlights
It is widely agreed that a reliable hydrologic prediction is imperative to plan, design and manage water resources activities (Tiwari and Chatterjee, 2010)
A t-test determines the relative significance of each parameter and ranks the parameter based on the absolute values whereas p-test determines the sensitivity of the parameter (GRIENSVEN, 2017)
Validation is the process where it is shown that the model is able to give approximate accurate results
Summary
It is widely agreed that a reliable hydrologic prediction is imperative to plan, design and manage water resources activities (Tiwari and Chatterjee, 2010). The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), an integrated river basin model, has been widely applied to simulate hydrological flows It is a small watershed to river basin-scale model to simulate the quality and quantity of surface and ground water and predict the environmental impact of land use, land management practices, and climate change (Amr Fleifle et al, 2017). It takes Digital Elevation Model (DEM), landuse/landcover, soil map and hydro-meteorological data as its inputs
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