Abstract
Abstract. A physical and distributed approach was proposed by Reggiani et al. (1998) to describe the hydrological responses at the catchment scale. The rigorous balance equations for mass, momentum, energy and entropy are applied on the divided spatial domains which are called Representative Elementary Watershed (REW). Based on the 2nd law of thermodynamics, Reggiani (1999) put forward several constitutive relations of hydrological processes. Associated with the above equations, the framework of a physically based distributed hydrological model was established. The crucial step for successfully applying this approach is to develop physically based closure relations for these terms and simplify the set of equations. The paper showed how a theoretical hydrological model based on the REW method was applied to prosecute the hydrological response simulation for a humid watershed. The established model was used to carry on the long-term (daily runoff forecasting) and short-term (runoff simulation of storm event) hydrological simulation in the studied watershed and the simulated results were analysed. These results and analysis proved that this physically based distributed hydrological model can produce satisfied simulation results and describe the hydrological responses correctly. Finally, several aspects to improve the model demonstrated by the results and analysis were put forward which would be carried out in the future.
Highlights
Simulation and prediction of hydrological responses at the catchment scale is a grand challenge in the hydrological research
Cause of error production of No 850705 flood simulation is same to the other three flood events. Overall these results show the hydrological model based on Representative Elementary Watershed (REW) approach performs well in simulation of flood events in a humid watershed
Great progress has been made in theoretical and applied aspects of the REW approach in recent years, application in humid or semi-humid area have been excluded in these applications
Summary
Simulation and prediction of hydrological responses at the catchment scale is a grand challenge in the hydrological research. The current generation of physically based, distributed hydrological models for the upscaling of point-scale balance equations, as set out by Freeze and Harlan (1969), have the drawback that there is no a priori perception about how the micro-scale processes interact with each other and cannot account for the self-organized features that emerge at the macro-scale, i.e. catchment scale, as a result of these interactions (McDonnell et al, 2007). 4, after describing the data in this research, the REW approach will be applied in the humid study area and the results of simulation will be analysed
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