HYDROLOGIC MODELING OF TWO GLACIATED WATERSHEDS IN NORTHEAST PENNSYLVANIA¹

Abstract

A hydrologic modeling study, using the Hydrologic Simulation Program ‐ FORTRAN (HSPF), was conducted in two glaciated watersheds, Purdy Creek and Ariel Creek in northeastern Pennsylvania. Both watersheds have wetlands and poorly drained soils due to low hydraulic conductivity and presence of fragipans. The HSPF model was calibrated in the Purdy Creek watershed and verified in the Ariel Creek watershed for June 1992 to December 1993 period. In Purdy Creek, the total volume of observed stream‐flow during the entire simulation period was 13.36 × 106 m3 and the simulated streamflow volume was 13.82 × 106 m3 (5 percent difference). For the verification simulation in Ariel Creek, the difference between the total observed and simulated flow volumes was 17 percent. Simulated peak flow discharges were within two hours of the observed for 30 of 46 peak flow events (discharge greater than 0.1 m3/sec) in Purdy Creek and 27 of 53 events in Ariel Creek. For 22 of the 46 events in Purdy Creek and 24 of 53 in Ariel Creek, the differences between the observed and simulated peak discharge rates were less than 30 percent. These 22 events accounted for 63 percent of total volume of streamflow observed during the selected 46 peak flow events in Purdy Creek. In Ariel Creek, these 24 peak flow events accounted for 62 percent of the total flow observed during all peak flow events. Differences in observed and simulated peak flow rates and volumes (on a percent basis) were greater during the snowmelt runoff events and summer periods than for other times.

Impact of time‐scale of the calibration objective function on the performance of watershed models

“…Note that reported values of R 2 for various watersheds during SWAT calibration range between 0Ð63 and 0Ð98 (computed at monthly time-scale; e.g. Arnold and Allen, 1996;Arnold et al, 1998;Srinivasan et al, 1998;Cotter et al, 2003). It is noted that the efficiency of the model, which is a measure of the model's ability to predict values away from the mean, is satisfactory during calibration and validation (0Ð70-0Ð81 during calibration and 0Ð41-0Ð79 during validation for SMC).…”

Determination of runoff and sediment yield from a small watershed in sub‐humid subtropics using the HSPF model

“…Several investigators have employed HSPF for evaluating the impact of various watershed management practices (Bicknell et al, 1985;Moore et al, 1992;Tsihrintzis et al, 3036 A. MISHRA, S. KAR AND V. P. SINGH 1996). Srinivasan et al (1998) applied HSPF to glaciated watersheds consisting of wetlands and poorly drained soils in northeastern Pennsylvania. The HSPF model has been used worldwide, mostly to simulate hydrological processes of large watersheds (Albek et al, 2004;Hayashi et al, 2004;Singh, 2004).…”

Application of two hydrologic models with different runoff mechanisms to a hillslope dominated watershed in the northeastern US: a comparison of HSPF and SMR

“…HSPF has been used to simulate: (1) a wide variety of hydrologic conditions (Srinivasan et al, 1998;Zarriello and Ries, 2000), (2) transport of various non-point source pollutants, including contaminated sediment (Fontaine and Jacomino, 1997) and pesticides (Laroche et al, 1996), and (3) land use management and flood control scenarios . SMR, developed by us, has been used in a limited number of cases as a water quality management tool for rural watersheds (Boll et al, 1998), and appears to effectively simulate variable-source-area hydrology (Frankenberger et al, 1999;Walter et al, 2000).…”