Investigating the behaviour of a small Mediterranean catchment using three different hydrological models as hypotheses

Ruiz-Pérez, Guiomar; Medici, Chiara; Latron, Jérôme; Llorens, Pilar; Gallart, Francesc; Francés, Félix

doi:10.1002/hyp.10738

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 57 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The recession curve of the catchment is rather steep just after the events and more sustained between consecutive events. A recent modelling work has suggested the concept of a twofold baseflow configuration, consisting of both quick and delayed components in order to better simulate the catchment recessions (Ruiz-Pérez et al, 2016).…”

Section: Study Site and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

A GLUE‐based uncertainty assessment framework for tritium‐inferred transit time estimations under baseflow conditions

Gallart

Roig-Planasdemunt

Stewart

et al. 2016

Hydrological Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The last decade has seen major technical and scientific improvements in the study of water transfer time through catchments. Nevertheless, it has been argued that most of these developments used conservative tracers that may disregard the oldest component of water transfer, which often has transit times greater than 5 years. Indeed, although the analytical reproducibility of tracers limits the detection of the older flow components associated with the most dampened seasonal fluctuations, this is very rarely taken into account in modelling applications. Tritium is the only environmental tracer at hand to investigate transfer times in the 5‐ to 50‐year range in surface waters, as dissolved gases are not suitable due to the degassing process. Water dating with tritium has often been difficult because of the complex history of its atmospheric concentration, but its current stabilization together with recent analytical improvements open promising perspectives. In this context, the innovative contribution of this study lies in the development of a generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation‐based approach for analysing the uncertainties associated with the modelling of transit time due to both parameter identification and tracer analytical precision issues. A coupled resampling procedure allows assessment of the statistical significance of the transfer time differences found in diverse waters. This approach was developed for tritium and the exponential‐piston model but can be implemented for virtually any tracer and model. Stream baseflow, spring and shallow aquifer waters from the Vallcebre research catchments, analysed for tritium in different years with different analytical precisions, were investigated by using this approach and taking into account other sources of uncertainty. The results showed three groups of waters of different mean transit times, with all the stream baseflow and spring waters older than the 5‐year threshold needing tritium. Low sensitivity of the results to the model structure was also demonstrated. Dual solutions were found for the waters sampled in 2013, but these results may be disambiguated when additional analyses will be made in a few years. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

show abstract

Section: Study Site and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

A GLUE‐based uncertainty assessment framework for tritium‐inferred transit time estimations under baseflow conditions

Gallart

Roig-Planasdemunt

Stewart

et al. 2016

Hydrological Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To measure the distance between the two empirical functions, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) two-sample test was used. This nonparametric method allows comparing two samples and quantifying the distance between the empirical distributions of the two samples [51]; thus, it can be used to rank the traits according to how dominant they are in determining the final outcome [52][53][54].…”

Section: General Sensitivity Analysis (Gsa) and Determination Of Domimentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of Plant Traits in Photosynthesis and Thermal Damage Avoidance under Warmer and Drier Climates in Boreal Forests

Ruiz-Pérez

Launiainen

Vico

2019

Forests

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the future, boreal forests will face warmer and in some cases drier conditions, potentially resulting in extreme leaf temperatures and reduced photosynthesis. One potential and still partially unexplored avenue to prepare boreal forest for future climates is the identification of plant traits that may support photosynthetic rates under a changing climate. However, the interplay among plant traits, soil water depletion and the occurrence of heat stress has been seldom explored in boreal forests. Here, a mechanistic model describing energy and mass exchanges among the soil, plant and atmosphere is employed to identify which combinations of growing conditions and plant traits allow trees to simultaneously keep high photosynthetic rates and prevent thermal damage under current and future growing conditions. Our results show that the simultaneous lack of precipitation and warm temperatures is the main trigger of thermal damage and reduction of photosynthesis. Traits that facilitate the coupling of leaves to the atmosphere are key to avoid thermal damage and guarantee the maintenance of assimilation rates in the future. Nevertheless, the same set of traits may not maximize forest productivity over current growing conditions. As such, an effective trait selection needs to explicitly consider the expected changes in the growing conditions, both in terms of averages and extremes.

show abstract

“…Whether the purpose of modelling is process understanding as part of hypothesis testing (Clark et al, ; Ruiz‐Pérez et al, ) or political or industrial decision‐making (Ledesma, Köhler, & Futter, ; Olsson & Andersson, ), modellers seek to reproduce natural processes as “realistically” as possible while maximizing model performance and minimizing uncertainty (Savenije, ). Thus, all modelling exercises attempt to reduce individual error sources as much as possible so as to constrain the overall uncertainty.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gridded climate data products are an alternative to instrumental measurements as inputs to rainfall–runoff models

Ledesma

Futter

2017

Hydrological Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Rainfall-runoff models are widely used to predict flows using observed (instrumental) time series of air temperature and precipitation as inputs. Poor model performance is often associated with difficulties in estimating catchment-scale meteorological variables from point observations. Readily available gridded climate products are an underutilized source of temperature and precipitation time series for rainfall-runoff modelling, which may overcome some of the performance issues associated with poor-quality instrumental data in small headwater monitoring catchments.Here we compare the performance of instrumental measured and E-OBS gridded temperature and precipitation time series as inputs in the rainfall-runoff models "PERSiST" and "HBV" for flow prediction in six small Swedish catchments. For both models and most catchments, the gridded data produced statistically better simulations than did those obtained using instrumental measurements. Despite the high correspondence between instrumental and gridded temperature, both temperature and precipitation were responsible for the difference. We conclude that (a) gridded climate products such as the E-OBS dataset could be more widely used as alternative input to rainfall-runoff models, even when instrumental measurements are available, and (b) the processing applied to gridded climate products appears to provide a more realistic approximation of small catchment-scale temperature and precipitation patterns needed for flow simulations.Further research on this issue is needed and encouraged. Hydrological modelling is essential for understanding runoff generation and solute transport processes. Modelling is subject to various types of uncertainty due to errors in input and calibration data (e.g., measurement errors and representativeness in time and space), model structure errors (e.g., inadequate or incorrect representation of processes and simplifications), and model parameter errors (e.g., "effective" vs. "actual" values and representativeness) (Beven, 2006;Clark, Kavetski, & Fenicia, 2011;Engeland, Xu, & Gottschalk, 2005). These multiple sources of uncertainty are not easily separated, leading to complex error structures and challenging hydrological simulation.Whether the purpose of modelling is process understanding as part of hypothesis testing (Clark et al., 2011;Ruiz-Pérez et al., 2016) or political or industrial decision-making (Ledesma, Köhler, & Futter, 2012;Olsson & Andersson, 2007), modellers seek to reproduce natural processes as "realistically" as possible while maximizing model performance and minimizing uncertainty (Savenije, 2009). Thus, all modelling exercises attempt to reduce individual error sources as much as possible so as to constrain the overall uncertainty. Errors in model input data are one of the a priori simple and known types of uncertainty (Beven, 2006;Renard, Kavetski, Kuczera, Thyer, & Franks, 2010). Yet these errors are difficult to identify and correct, potentially leading to poor model performance. ----------------------------...

show abstract

Investigating the behaviour of a small Mediterranean catchment using three different hydrological models as hypotheses

Cited by 11 publications

References 57 publications

A GLUE‐based uncertainty assessment framework for tritium‐inferred transit time estimations under baseflow conditions

A GLUE‐based uncertainty assessment framework for tritium‐inferred transit time estimations under baseflow conditions

Role of Plant Traits in Photosynthesis and Thermal Damage Avoidance under Warmer and Drier Climates in Boreal Forests

Gridded climate data products are an alternative to instrumental measurements as inputs to rainfall–runoff models

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About