Integrating water use systems and soil and water conservation measures into a hydrological model of an Iranian Wadi syst
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Springer-Verlag
Integrating water use systems and soil and water conservation measures into a hydrological model of an Iranian Wadi system Nariman MAHMOODI1*, Jens KIESEL1,2, Paul D WAGNER1, Nicola FOHRER1 1
Department of Hydrology and Water Resources Management, Institute for Natural Resource Conservation, Kiel University, Kiel 24118, Germany 2 Department of Ecosystem Research, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin 12489, Germany
Abstract: Water resources are precious in arid and semi-arid areas such as the Wadis of Iran. To sustainably manage these limited water resources, the residents of the Iranian Wadis have been traditionally using several water use systems (WUSs) which affect natural hydrological processes. In this study, WUSs and soil and water conservation measures (SWCMs) were integrated in a hydrological model of the Halilrood Basin in Iran. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was used to simulate the hydrological processes between 1993 and 2009 at daily time scale. To assess the importance of WUSs and SWCMs, we compared a model setup without WUSs and SWCMs (Default model) with a model setup with WUSs and SWCMs (WUS-SWCM model). When compared to the observed daily stream flow, the number of acceptable calibration runs as defined by the performance thresholds (Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE)≥0.68, –25%≤percent bias (PBIAS)≤25% and ratio of standard deviation (RSR)≤0.56) is 177 for the Default model and 1945 for the WUS-SWCM model. Also, the average Kling–Gupta efficiency (KGE) of acceptable calibration runs for the WUS-SWCM model is higher in both calibration and validation periods. When WUSs and SWCMs are implemented, surface runoff (between 30% and 99%) and water yield (between 0 and 18%) decreased in all sub-basins. Moreover, SWCMs lead to a higher contribution of groundwater flow to the channel and compensate for the extracted water by WUSs from the shallow aquifer. In summary, implementing WUSs and SWCMs in the SWAT model enhances model plausibility significantly. Keywords: SWAT model; stream flow; Wadis; multi-metric framework; water use systems; soil and water conservation measures; Halilrood Basin Citation: Nariman MAHMOODI, Jens KIESEL, Paul D WAGNER, Nicola FOHRER. 2020. Integrating water use systems and soil and water conservation measures into a hydrological model of an Iranian Wadi system. Journal of Arid Land, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40333-020-0125-3.
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Introduction
Over-exploitation of water resources and water scarcity have become a worldwide and prevalent problem in most arid and semi-arid regions such as the Wadis in Iran (Voss et al., 2013). In addition to a strong variability of precipitation in space and time in arid and hyper arid climates, these regions experience the lowest amounts of precipitation in Iran (Khalili and Bazrafshan, 2004; Motiee et al., 2006). In arid environments, most of the rainwater is lost to evaporation (Tavakoli et al., 2010). Under such circumstances, the limited available freshwater is a fundamental an
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