Terrestrial hydrological features of the Pearl River basin in South China

Abstract

This paper presents the terrestrial hydrological features of the Pearl River basin in South China by using a macro-scale hydrological model, the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model, and a routing scheme. Without calibration, the VIC model is used to simulate streamflow, evapotranspiration and soil moisture change at a daily time step for the period 1951–2000. After aggregation of daily output, it is observed that the VIC streamflow simulation is comparable to the observation at a month step. Moreover, from the model simulation, the study reveals that the monthly soil moisture change varies dynamically for maintaining the basin water balance, and both of the streamflow and evapotranspiration are dominant hydrological processes over the basin. With the routing scheme, the hydrological simulation from the VIC model is investigated at a daily step. It is observed that the scheme can improve the simulation of the timings and magnitudes of the daily streamflow peaks significantly, and the temporal scale of the influence of the routing on the streamflow simulation is less than 2–3 weeks in the Pearl River basin.