Overview of Ecohydrological Models and Systems at the Watershed Scale

Abstract

In the context of global change exacerbating the water crisis, it is difficult to solve the new problems of water resource management based on traditional hydrology without considering other aspects of water circulation, such as biotic dynamics. Vegetation, which once was thought to play only a relatively minor role and was ignored or treated as a static component in models, has now been recognized as one of the most important factors in water circulation. Ecohydrology has been promoted as a concept that links ecological and hydrological processes and considers interactions between water resources and ecosystems. Ecohydrological models are not only important tools for studying the mechanisms of ecological patterns and processes but also essential tools to assess the effects of environmental change on hydrological and ecological processes, providing solutions to issues of water management. This paper: 1) analyzes the characteristics of the interactions between terrestrial vegetation and hydrological processes; 2) summarizes the categories of existing watershed ecohydrological models for analysis and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of ecohydrological models; 3) reviews the typical achievements of the application of ecohydrological models; and 4) illustrates the key issues of ecohydrological models at the watershed scale.

A soil column model for predicting the interaction between water table and evapotranspiration

“…A good comprehension of the coupling which occurs at different spatial scales, from the plot to the watershed, between atmosphere, vegetation dynamics, and hydrological processes is important in different fields such as hydrometeorology, ecology, biogeochemical cycles, geochemistry of soil, and rock weathering. For example, a realistic representation of this coupling is necessary to address the following issues: the impacts of arid or semiarid climates on vegetation and soil erosion [ Rodriguez‐Iturbe et al ., ], the circulation of chemical nutrients in the soil (C, N, …) and the weathering of soil and rock minerals [ Zhang et al ., ; Goddéris et al ., ], the impacts of the climate change on vegetation or water resources, from the local to the regional scale [ Krinner et al ., ; Xia and Shao , ], the measures to propose to stakeholders for forest and water management [ Chen et al ., ]. Therefore, a hydrological model that incorporates vegetation and land surface processes is needed to accurately model at the different scales of interest the interactions and the feedbacks between atmospheric, vegetation, and water dynamics along the vertical soil‐vegetation‐atmosphere continuum and over time.…”

A novel segmentation algorithm for clustered flexional agricultural products based on image analysis

“…For example, a new algorithm based on the convex hull information to split various different orientations of touching character was developed (Roy et al, 2012). In many other research fields, watershed method is widely used as the combination method to complete the segmentation work, such as combining fuzzy cluster analysis with watershed algorithm (Rao and Srinivasa, 2006), setting markers in images (Flores and Lotufo, 2010), improving watershed algorithm based on morphological filtering (Yen et al, 2015;Sanchez et al, 2015), wavelet transform (Hammoudeh and Newman, 2015;Chen et al, 2015) and integrating texture in segmentation to avoid the over-segmentation problem (Trias-Sanz et al, 2008).…”

On the use of satellite data to calibrate a parsimonious ecohydrological model in ungauged basins

“…Hereafter, we used the terminology used predominantly in Hydrology due to our own background and distinguished between three different types of models: empirical models or black boxes, conceptual and physically-based models. Chen et al (2015) reviewed the most used models nowadays and they classified them into these three categories (empirical, conceptual and physically-based).…”

“…Beven, 2001;Khakbaz, 2012;Ruiz-Pérez et al, 2016a) and in particular for ecohydrological models (Arnold et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2015). The common conclusion is that the selection of a model depends on: (1) the purpose of the model and the working scale, (2) existing system understanding and, (3) practical constraints such as available data and computational power.…”

“…The common conclusion is that the selection of a model depends on: (1) the purpose of the model and the working scale, (2) existing system understanding and, (3) practical constraints such as available data and computational power. In fact, the physically-based models have a complex computation involving large amount of parameters, most of which are difficult to obtain (Chen et al, 2015).…”