Simulation of ecohydrolgocal process using an optimality based model

Abstract

Ecohydrological modeling is essential to assess impact of climate change and intense human activities (land use change) on hydrological process and ecosystem to support watershed management. The traditional ecohydrological models have the deficit in coupling ecological and hydrological processes, and parameterizing vegetation parameters. Recently, optimality hypothesis, proposed by Eagleson, has been introduced to ecohydrology research which has given rise to a novel framework for modeling ecohydrological process. However, as optimality-based model has just spring up in ecohydrology, it has not been fully tested and more application of this kind of model is needed. In this study, we tried to apply an optimality-model to simulate ecohydrological process so as to test the model and support watershed management. The model has been tested in the Walnut Gulch watershed. With collected data from the study area, the model was used to simulate hourly evaportranspiration and GPP and so on. The validation result showed that, the results produced by the model were in good agreement with observed values. The VOM model can effectively overcomes the problem of traditional watershed ecohydrological models in depict ecological and hydrological coupling, the haunting task of vegetation parameters calibration. This could come to a conclusion the optimality-based ecohydrological model could be a potential approach to simulate ecohydrological process.