CSDMS 2015 annual meeting poster LaurenceLin
Modeling water and solute fluxes from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems
Sagy Cohen, University of Alabama Tuscaloosa Alabama, United States.
Lisa Davis, University of Alabama Tuscaloosa Alabama, United States.
Abstract:
Existing watershed models for hydrology and solute exports include physically-based models, empirical models and their hybrids. These models has been developed for different watershed sizes and different research interests. The Regional Hydro-Ecological Simulation System (RHESSys) is one of the physically-based models that have been widely used. It was developed to couple hillslope hydrology and forest ecosystem in small / medium catchments. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a hybrid model that contains physically-based hydrology and empirical biology. It is mostly used for medium / large agriculture and urban-developed catchments. The Water Balance Model (WBM) is an empirical-oriented model that estimates discharge and suspended sediment export in large drainage basins. In this study, we evaluated these three types of watershed models for catchments with various sizes. The models were initialized using the elevation, climate, and vegetation data and calibrated using discharge monitored by USGS or Long Term Ecological Research (LTER). The simulated daily patterns of water and solute fluxes from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystem along the main channel were compared among the models. We aimed to recommend appropriate models for estimating water and nitrogen fluxes from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems given a certain size of catchment.
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