Carolyne W.L. de Andrade, Suzana M.G.L. Montenegro, Abelardo A.A.

Montenegro, José
R. de S. Lima, Raghavan Srinivasan, Charles A. Jones,
Soil moisture and discharge modeling in a representative watershed in northeastern
Brazil using SWAT,
Ecohydrology & Hydrobiology,
Volume 19, Issue 2,
2019,
Pages 238-251,
ISSN 1642-3593,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecohyd.2018.09.002.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1642359318300624)
Abstract: Soil moisture and discharge are interrelated variables which play a major
role on water availability, environmental conservation and ecohydrological
functioning of a watershed. In order to investigate their spatio-temporal dynamics,
hydrological models are valuable tools. However, to minimize uncertainties of the
modeled estimates, good quality distributed observational data sets are required
for realist predictions. The aim of this study is to apply the Soil and Water
Assessment Tool (SWAT) in a representative watershed of the northeastern Brazil,
and to evaluate the effects of using both discharge and soil moisture datasets on
the model uncertainties and predictions. The study area is located in the Mundaú
River Basin (4090.39km2). For streamflow, the values of the Nash–Sutcliffe model
efficiency (NS) among gauge stations ranged from 0.71 to 0.92 in the calibration
phase for the annual time step, and between 0.55 and 0.78 in the monthly time step.
In the validation phase, NS values ranged from 0.53 to 0.76 for the annual time
step, and between 0.62 and 0.72 for the monthly time step. Calibration and
validation against daily soil moisture data resulted in a NS values of 0.53 and
0.52, and PBIAS of 0.4% and −1.1%, respectively. These results represent
“satisfactory” and “very good” performances for discharge and soil moisture.
Although there is still some amount of uncertainty, the use of complementary data,
such as soil moisture, to calibrate and validate the SWAT model is useful,
especially when discharge data are scarce, as for some watersheds in the semiarid
zone.
Keywords: Data scarcity; Soil moisture; Hydrological modeling; SWATCUP; Uncertainty
analysis