Improving Alpine Summertime Streamflow Simulations by the Incorporation of Evapotranspiration Data

Abstract

Over the last decade, autocalibration routines have become commonplace in watershed modeling. This approach is most often used to simulate a streamflow at a basin’s outlet. In alpine settings, spring/early summer snowmelt is by far the dominant signal in this system. Therefore, there is great potential for a modeled watershed to underperform during other times of the year. This tendency has been noted in many prior studies. In this work, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was auto-calibrated with the SUFI-2 routine. A mountainous watershed from Idaho was examined (Upper North Fork). In this study, this basin was calibrated using three estimates of evapotranspiration (ET): Moderate Resolution Imagining Spectrometer (MODIS), Simplified Surface Energy Balance, and Global Land Evaporation: the Amsterdam Model. The MODIS product in particular, had the greatest utility in helping to constrain SWAT parameters that have a high sensitivity to ET. Streamflow simulations that utilize these ET parameter values have improved recessional and summertime streamflow performances during calibration (2007 to 2011) and validation (2012 to 2014) periods. Streamflow performance was monitored with standard objective metrics (Bias and Nash Sutcliffe coefficients) that quantified overall, recessional, and summertime peak flows. This approach yielded dramatic enhancements for all three observations. These results demonstrate the utility of this approach for improving watershed modeling fidelity outside the main snowmelt season.