Evaluating Hydrological Models for Deriving Water Resources in Peninsular Spain

Abstract

Water availability is essential for the appropriate analysis of its sustainable management. We performed a comparative study of six hydrological balance models (Témez, ABCD, GR2M, AWBM, GUO-5p, and Thornthwaite-Mather) in several basins with different climatic conditions within Spain in the 1977–2010 period. We applied six statistical indices to compare the results of the models: the Akaike information criterion (AIC), the Bayesian information criterion (BIC), Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient (NSE), coefficient of determination (R2), percent bias (PBIAS), and the relative error between observed and simulated run-off volumes (REV). Furthermore, we applied the FITEVAL software to determine the uncertainty of the model. The results show that when the catchments are more humid the obtained results are better. The GR2M model gave the best fit in peninsular Spain in a UNEP aridity index framework above 1, and NSE values above 0.75 in a 95% confidence interval classify GR2M as very good for humid watersheds. The use of REV is also a key index in the assessment of the margin of error. Flow duration curves show good performance in the probabilities of exceedance lower than 80% in wet watersheds and deviations in low streamflows account for less than 5% of the total streamflow.

A Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation Model of Sediment Deposition in a Storage Reservoir Subject to Water Withdrawal

“…The values of the considered statistical criteria (percent bias and t-test) are used to evaluate the deposited sediment depths in the selected sections, as shown in Table 4. For the first upper three sections, the PBIAS values were less than ±10%, indicating very good model performance [41], and the t-test values were less than the tabulated values (2.0 at a 0.05 probability level), indicating that the differences of the sediment depths between the observed and simulated values are insignificant. For the fourth section, the PBIAS value was greater than 10%, meaning that the model performance is unsatisfactory.…”

“…The second measured values used for model validation were the sediment concentration measurements in [21] at different depths in the reservoir near the intake at two different times, as shown in Table 2. The PBIAS between the measured and simulated sediment concentration was −3.6% (less than ± 10%), indicating very good model performance [41]. Furthermore, the paired t-test value was 0.43 (less than the tabulated value (2) at a 0.05 probability level), indicating that there is no significant difference.…”

A Preliminary Assessment of the “Undercatching” and the Precipitation Pattern in an Alpine Basin

“…Finally, the obtained snow model outputs (SO) are added for all cells to define the inputs of the lumped rainfall-runoff model. The Témez model is a simple lumped rainfall-runoff model that was successfully applied in Spanish basins (e.g., References [33,[54][55][56][57][58]). This model operates by performing water balances between the various processes that take place in the hydrological system, and it considers two storage tanks: the soil moisture (or unsaturated zone) and the aquifer (or saturated zone) [52,57,59].…”

Assessment of High Resolution Air Temperature Fields at Rocky Mountain National Park by Combining Scarce Point Measurements with Elevation and Remote Sensing Data

“…For most of the hydrological models, including simple parsimonious approaches and more complex ones, air temperature or evapotranspiration (explained in part by air temperature) are essential variables [4,5]. Hydrological models can be lumped, which do not require the spatial distribution of the inputs and the model variables, or distributed, which demands a good understanding of the heterogeneity of the forcing variable fields [6].…”