Abstract
Many regions around the globe are subjected to precipitation-data scarcity that often hinders the capacity of hydrological modeling. The entropy theory and the principle of maximum entropy can help hydrologists to extract useful information from the scarce data available. In this work, we propose a new method to assess sub-daily precipitation features such as duration and intensity based on daily precipitation using the principle of maximum entropy. Particularly in arid and semiarid regions, such sub-daily features are of central importance for modeling sediment transport and deposition. The obtained features were used as input to the SYPoME model (sediment yield using the principle of maximum entropy). The combined method was implemented in seven catchments in Northeast Brazil with drainage areas ranging from 10−3 to 10+2 km2 in assessing sediment yield and delivery ratio. The results show significant improvement when compared with conventional deterministic modeling, with Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.96 and absolute error of 21% for our method against NSE of −4.49 and absolute error of 105% for the deterministic approach.
Highlights
The model, requires sub-daily data, such as rainfall duration and intensity measurements, which are often unavailable in arid and semiarid regions [27], such as the Brazilian northeast region
Our objectives are as follows: (1) to propose a temporal down-scaling method to estimate sub-daily precipitation data from daily precipitation data based on the principle of maximum entropy (MEDRID); (2) to assess the method quality when implemented on ungauged regions; and (3) to evaluate the effect of the method on the performance of long-term sediment yield modeling
The sediment yield of sub-daily events was quantified using the principle of maximum entropy (PoME)
Summary
Climate change challenges our capacity to preserve natural resources, such as clean water and productive soil. Climate change is blamed for erosion rates increasing by nearly 17% in the USA and Europe until 2050 due to higher rainfall erosivity [2,3]. This is why soil erosion turned into a key challenge for the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN [4,5]. Soil erosion imposes a threat to water supply, as pollutants and heavy metals are transported along with sediment, augmenting toxicity, turbidity and eutrophication in aquatic environments [6,7]
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