Abstract
Baseflow is influenced by incoming groundwater to aquifers and is closely related to watershed characteristics. Understanding baseflow characteristics is of great importance to river ecosystems and water management. Baseflow estimation typically depends on the observed streamflow in gauged watersheds, but accurate predictions of streamflow through modeling can also be useful in estimating baseflow. However, uncertainty occurs in the baseflow estimation process when modeling streamflow. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to compare the method that is proposed by Arnold and Allen (Scenario I) to an improved recession prediction method where the alpha factor (baseflow recession coefficient) is recalibrated and is applied to SWAT (Scenario II). Although the differences between the results (NSE, R2, RMSE, MAE, d) of Scenarios I and II were small regarding streamflow and recession, the Scenario II method more accurately reflected the recession characteristics than the Scenario I method. Furthermore, the Scenario II method was better in baseflow prediction than for the Scenario I method proposed by Arnold and Allen. Therefore, these outputs pave the way and contribute to an efficient method for water management in watersheds.
Highlights
Baseflow is the portion of streamflow that is delayed subsurface flow and generally maintained by groundwater discharge
In order to consider and analyze the characteristics of recession, we investigated the streamflow stations that were included in the Water Management Information System (WAMIS) due to availability of continuous daily streamflow data, which is required for baseflow separation using the Bflow program
We compared baseflow estimates for each study watershed using Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NSE), R2, root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and d for comparison with the method that is proposed by Arnold and Allen
Summary
Baseflow is the portion of streamflow that is delayed subsurface flow and generally maintained by groundwater discharge. Understanding the baseflow process is important to deal with various water resources issues, such as water resources management strategies, low flow conditions assessment, hydrological modeling calibration, and water quality studies [6]. No direct approach exists for continuously measuring the variability of streamflow recession under different conditions and the corresponding baseflow, because the baseflow is usually affected by diverse climatological and geological factors, with considerable variations in spatio-temporality [7,8]. The baseflow recession curve method [12] and the groundwater topology curve method [13] have been used as analysis methods, and software for separating baseflow and the direct runoff from streamflow has been developed [14,15]. Understanding the role of baseflow in streamflow processes is critical for the identification and quantification of groundwater storage and
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