Development of WEP model and its application to an urban watershed

Abstract

AbstractA distributed hydrological model, water and energy transfer processes (WEP) model, is developed to simulate spatially variable water and energy processes in watersheds with complex land covers. In the model, state variables include depression storage on land surfaces and canopies, soil moisture content, land surface temperature, groundwater tables and water stages in rivers, etc. The subgrid heterogeneity of land use is also taken into consideration by using the mosaic method. For hydrological processes, evapotranspiration is computed by the Penman–Monteith equation, infiltration excess during heavy rains is simulated by a generalized Green–Ampt model, whereas saturation excess during the remaining periods is obtained by doing balance analysis in unsaturated soil layers. A two‐dimensional simulation of multilayered aquifers is performed for groundwater flow. Flow routing is conducted by using the kinematic wave method in a one‐dimensional scheme. For energy processes, short‐wave radiation is based on observation or deduced from sunshine duration, long‐wave radiation is calculated according to temperatures, latent and sensible fluxes are computed by the aerodynamic method and surface temperature is solved by the force–restore method. In addition, anthropogenic components, e.g. water supply, groundwater lift, sewerage drainage and energy consumption, etc. are also taken into account. The model is applied to the Ebi River watershed (27 km2) with a grid size of 50 m and a time step of 1 h. The model is verified through comparisons of simulated river discharges, groundwater levels and land surface temperatures with the observed values. A comparison between water balance at present (1993) and that in the future (2035) is also conducted. It is found that the hydrological cycle in the future can be improved through the implementation of infiltration trenches for the storm water from urban canopies. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.