Abstract

ABSTRACT The land use characteristics of rural watersheds allow infiltration and consequent generation of groundwater flow, which constitutes a significant contribution to the hydrograph. Prior to this study, the MODCEL-COPPE/UFRJ model simulated only runoff, disregarding the losses occurred in rainfall-runoff process. Therefore, its application was more appropriate to urban watersheds, simulating flood events where surface flows prevail. This study aimed at representing the infiltration process and at incorporating the groundwater flow in the MODCEL’s structure, making feasible the rural watersheds simulation thus expanding its applicability as a hydrological model. A case study was performed in a 417 km2 subcatchment of Piabanha River, located at Petrópolis/RJ. It’s a predominantly rural watershed, with 80% of its area covered by forests. The model represented satisfactorily the seasonality and the magnitude of simulated recharges. In the parameter calibration procedure gave a coefficient of determination R2 = 0.75, comparing the calculated flows to the observed flows. During validation period, we obtained a coefficient of determination R2 = 0.76. The fit obtained was superior to that obtained in previous modeling of the same watershed by SMAP and MODCEL (previous version) and it was similar to TOPMODEL. In the hydrograph recession, new MODCEL presented R2 = 0.75, against 0.52 obtained in its previous version.

Highlights

  • The efficiency of Water Resources Management depends on the existence and accuracy of information about water availability

  • The entire area of the river basin is represented by the set of cells, which interact through links using different hydraulic equations (MIGUEZ et al, 2015b)

  • The visual inspection of the hydrograph indicates that the model, in general, presented a satisfactory response, compared to the observed flows

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Summary

Introduction

The efficiency of Water Resources Management depends on the existence and accuracy of information about water availability. A free mathematical model, developed at UFRJ and widely used in recent years, is MODCEL (MIGUEZ, 2001; MASCARENHAS; MIGUEZ, 2002; MIGUEZ et al, 2011). It is a distributed hydrodynamic model, based on the concept of flow cells (ZANOBETTI et al, 1970), which are homogeneous compartments used to characterize the surface of the basin. The entire area of the river basin is represented by the set of cells, which interact through links using different hydraulic equations (MIGUEZ et al, 2015b)

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