SWAT Model calibration and uncertainty analysis for streamflow prediction of the Tons River Basin, India, using Sequential Uncertainty Fitting (SUFI-2) algorithm

Abstract

Tons river basin has a great significance to states Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in India, concerning water resources aspects and the ecological balances. A hydrological modeling approach was used to identify the sensitive hydrological parameters of the basin through Sequential Uncertainty Fitting (SUFI-2) technique. SUFI-2 was used for the calibration of SOIL WATER ASSESSMENT TOOL (SWAT) model. It was calibrated for period (1979–2000) including 3 years as warm up (1979–1982), subsequently model was validated on 11 years of datasets (2001–2011). The percentage of observation covered by the 95PPU (p-factor) and the average thickness of the 95PPU band divided by the standard deviation of the measured data (r-factor), were taken into an account for performance evaluation of model. In calibration and validation the p-factor and the r-factor was obtained as 0.54, 0.76 and 0.68, 0.56 respectively. The coefficient of determination (R2), Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), percent bias (PBIAS) and RMSE-observations standard deviation ratio (RSR) have been used for goodness of fit between observation and final best simulation. The R2, NSE, PBIAS and RSR are 0.74, 0.73, −3.55 and 0.54 respectively during the calibration whereas in validation period values are 0.75, 0.69, 18.55 and 0.56 respectively.