How can a few streamflow measurements help to predict daily hydrographs at almost ungauged sites?

Abstract

Available data from nearby gauging stations can provide a great source of hydrometric information that is potentially transferable to an ungauged site. Furthermore, streamflow measurements may even be available for the ungauged site. This paper explores the potential of four distance-based regionalization methods to simulate daily hydrographs at almost ungauged pollution-control sites. Two methods use only the hydrological information provided by neighbouring catchments; the other two are new regionalization methods parameterized with a limited number of streamflow data available at the site of interest. Based on a network of 149 streamgauges and 21 pollution-control sites located in the Upper Rhine-Meuse area, the comparative assessment demonstrates the benefit of making available point streamflow measurements at the location of interest for improving quantitative streamflow prediction. The advantage is moderate for the prediction of flow types (stormflow, recession flow, baseflow) and pulse shape (duration of rising limb and falling limb).

How should a rainfall‐runoff model be parameterized in an almost ungauged catchment? A methodology tested on 609 catchments

“…However, the method is general and flexible enough to be efficiently applied to other models and objectives and a simple way was proposed to weight the regional and local information. The approach was tested on a large data set of 609 catchments and compared to two simple benchmarks, which gives confidence on its generality, overall efficiency [ Andréassian et al ., ] and applicability at the regional level [ Drogue and Plasse , ].…”

“…Temnerud et al [2007] carried out point flow measurements at 66 sites within a 78 km 2 catchment in northern Sweden during a low-flow period to investigate the role of spatial patterns in water quality issues. In France, systematic point flow measurement campaigns have been coordinated by the Rhine-Meuse Water Agency over the last two decades to improve the knowledge of low flows [Corbonnois et al, 1999;Decloux and Sary, 1991;Drogue and Plasse, 2014;François andSary, 1990, 1994;Plasse et al, 2014]. These point flow measurements may be useful for a number of objectives, such as low-flow estimation [Catalogne et al, 2014;Chopart and Sauquet, 2008;Eng and Milly, 2007;Goodwin and Young, 2007;Laaha and Bl€ oschl, 2005;Oberlin et al, 1973].…”

Can a regionalized model parameterisation be improved with a limited number of runoff measurements?

“…Related analyses were also performed by Perrin et al (2007Perrin et al ( , 2008 who relied on short, partly continuous series of runoff data to select parameters from a vast library of predefined sets. Drogue and Plasse (2014), finally, showed that runoff measurements at random times can improve distance-based regionalisation approaches.…”

“…The approach of combining a number of hydrographs based both on field measurements as well as Nearest Neighbour relations slightly resembles the methods used by Drogue and Plasse (2014). These authors selected their donor catchments on the basis of a hybrid distance that combines distance in space (rather than hydrological dissimilarity as in our case) with the distance between short observations and simulations with donor catchment parameter sets (using square root transformed runoff values for computing RMSE).…”

Prediction of hydrographs and flow-duration curves in almost ungauged catchments: Which runoff measurements are most informative for model calibration?

“…Parajka et al (2013) for an extended discussion). Hydrograph predictions from regionalization could be improved given that a few runoff measurements were available to further constrain model parameters (Rojas-Serna et al, 2006;Drogue and Plasse, 2014;Viviroli and Seibert, 2015;Rojas-Serna et al, 2016). Some authors assumed that a short and intensive field campaign could be carried out in the catchment of interest to collect data for model calibration.…”