Effects of Data and Model Simplification on the Results of a Wetland Water Resource Management Model

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a wetland water balance model for use in a large river basin with many different wetlands. The basic model was primarily developed for a single wetland with a complex water management system involving large amounts of specialized input data and water management details. The aim was to simplify the model structure and to use only commonly available data as input for the model, with the least possible loss of accuracy. Results from different variants of the model and data adaptation were tested against results from a detailed model. This shows that using commonly available data and unifying and simplifying the input data is tolerable up to a certain level. The simplification of the model has greater effects on the evaluated water balance components than the data adaptation. Because this simplification was necessary for large-scale use, we suggest that, for reasons of comparability, simpler models should always be applied with uniform data bases for large regions, though these should only be moderately simplified. Further, we recommend using these simplified models only for large-scale comparisons and using more specific, detailed models for investigations on smaller scales.

A systematic review of approaches for modelling current and future impacts of extreme rainfall events using green infrastructure

“…Potentially, this is highly relevant to inform land-use planning decisions as they can provide various scenarios to evaluate different scales and GI assessments. However, they tend to oversimplify the real world (Dietrich et al, 2016) and modelled processes (Parra et al, 2018), as well as ignore the exchange of groundwater (Pellicer-Martínez et al, 2015). They also tend to emerge from technical disciplines that may not typically capture and consider the political trade-offs that characterise discussions over differing land-use futures.…”