Streamflow sensitivity to water storage changes across Europe

Berghuijs, Wouter; Hartmann, Andreas; Woods, Ross

doi:10.1002/2016gl067927

Cited by 66 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Considering that T R is a measure derived from both a and b, it has likely inherited catchment ranking uncertainty from both these parameters. Numerous derived recession measures have been used for comparative catchment analysis (Sawaske and Freyberg, 2014;Berghuijs et al, 2016;Stoelzle et al, 2013), and the findings here suggest a trade-off; the development of more complex derived measures comes at the risk of compounding uncertainty.…”

Section: Recession Measures Are Characteristicmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…In general, only fitted exponents can be reliably compared between different recession events (e.g., Berghuijs et al, 2016;Sawaske and Freyberg, 2014). This is a consequence of a mathematical artifact that impacts fitted values of the recession scale parameter, arising when fitting power laws to datasets with arbitrarily chosen scaling (Dralle et al, 2015).…”

Section: Methods Combination Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Event-scale power law recession analysis: quantifying methodological uncertainty

Dralle

Karst

Charalampous

et al. 2017

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The study of single streamflow recession events is receiving increasing attention following the presentation of novel theoretical explanations for the emergence of power law forms of the recession relationship, and drivers of its variability. Individually characterizing streamflow recessions often involves describing the similarities and differences between model parameters fitted to each recession time series. Significant methodological sensitivity has been identified in the fitting and parameterization of models that describe populations of many recessions, but the dependence of estimated model parameters on methodological choices has not been evaluated for event-by-event forms of analysis. Here, we use daily streamflow data from 16 catchments in northern California and southern Oregon to investigate how combinations of commonly used streamflow recession definitions and fitting techniques impact parameter estimates of a widely used power law recession model. Results are relevant to watersheds that are relatively steep, forested, and rain-dominated. The highly seasonal mediterranean climate of northern California and southern Oregon ensures study catchments explore a wide range of recession behaviors and wetness states, ideal for a sensitivity analysis. In such catchments, we show the following: (i) methodological decisions, including ones that have received little attention in the literature, can impact parameter value estimates and model goodness of fit; (ii) the central tendencies of event-scale recession parameter probability distributions are largely robust to methodological choices, in the sense that differing methods rank catchments similarly according to the medians of these distributions; (iii) recession parameter distributions are method-dependent, but roughly catchment-independent, such that changing the choices made about a particular method affects a given parameter in similar ways across most catchments; and (iv) the observed correlative relationship between the power-law recession scale parameter and catchment antecedent wetness varies depending on recession definition and fitting choices. Considering study results, we recommend a combination of four key methodological decisions to maximize the quality of fitted recession curves, and to minimize bias in the related populations of fitted recession parameters.

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Section: Recession Measures Are Characteristicmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Methods Combination Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Event-scale power law recession analysis: quantifying methodological uncertainty

Dralle

Karst

Charalampous

et al. 2017

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…Beyond a correlation analysis that simply evaluates the strength of relations between variables, elasticity quantifies "how responsive one variable is to change in another variable" (18) or "the percentage change in a first variable to the percentage change in second variable, when the second variable has a causal influence on the first variable" (19). Other than several applications of elasticity on stream flow (20)(21)(22), we apply elasticity to groundwater recharge in hydrology. Here we define recharge sensitivity as the median ratio of interannual changes of recharge rates to the interannual changes of three climatic variables that drive recharge and evapotranspiration using a 20-y period: (i) Annual precipitation expresses general water availability, (ii) mean annual temperature is used as proxy for potential evapotranspiration, and (iii) the mean intensity of high-intensity events is used to account for the nonlinear impact of strong rainfall events (23).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced groundwater recharge rates and altered recharge sensitivity to climate variability through subsurface heterogeneity

Hartmann

Gleeson

Wada

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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151

109

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Our environment is heterogeneous. In hydrological sciences, the heterogeneity of subsurface properties, such as hydraulic conductivities or porosities, exerts an important control on water balance. This notably includes groundwater recharge, which is an important variable for efficient and sustainable groundwater resources management. Current large-scale hydrological models do not adequately consider this subsurface heterogeneity. Here we show that regions with strong subsurface heterogeneity have enhanced present and future recharge rates due to a different sensitivity of recharge to climate variability compared with regions with homogeneous subsurface properties. Our study domain comprises the carbonate rock regions of Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East, which cover ∼25% of the total land area. We compare the simulations of two large-scale hydrological models, one of them accounting for subsurface heterogeneity. Carbonate rock regions strongly exhibit "karstification," which is known to produce particularly strong subsurface heterogeneity. Aquifers from these regions contribute up to half of the drinking water supply for some European countries. Our results suggest that water management for these regions cannot rely on most of the presently available projections of groundwater recharge because spatially variable storages and spatial concentration of recharge result in actual recharge rates that are up to four times larger for present conditions and changes up to five times larger for potential future conditions than previously estimated. These differences in recharge rates for strongly heterogeneous regions suggest a need for groundwater management strategies that are adapted to the fast transit of water from the surface to the aquifers.groundwater recharge | subsurface heterogeneity | water resources | climate variability | climate change

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“…The system may vary in complexity (and hence in the inclusion of free calibration parameters), but the linear reservoir remains the basic building block. Examples of such models are the UH models of Nash (1957) and Dooge (1959) and the explicit soil moisture accounting (ESMA) models, of which the workhorse of operational Nordic hydrology, the Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalans (HBV) model (Bergström, 1992) serves as an example (see Beven, 2001 for a discussion on the evolution of rainfall-runoff models). In Lindström et al (1997), the upper zone (the reservoir responsible for quick response) of the HBV model was formulated as a non-linear reservoir, Q = ϑS 1+δ , where Q is runoff, S is storage and ϑ and δ are calibrated constants.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recession behaviour should be characteristic for a specific catchment (Tallaksen, 1995;Kirchner, 2009;Stoelzle et al, 2013;Berghuijs et al, 2016) since it provides hydrological information integrated over the catchment. Such a scaledup hydrological signal contrasts that of information derived from the extrapolation of point measurements.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating catchment-scale groundwater dynamics from recession analysis – enhanced constraining of hydrological models

Skaugen

Mengistu

2016

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. In this study, we propose a new formulation of subsurface water storage dynamics for use in rainfallrunoff models. Under the assumption of a strong relationship between storage and runoff, the temporal distribution of catchment-scale storage is considered to have the same shape as the distribution of observed recessions (measured as the difference between the log of runoff values). The mean subsurface storage is estimated as the storage at steady state, where moisture input equals the mean annual runoff. An important contribution of the new formulation is that its parameters are derived directly from observed recession data and the mean annual runoff. The parameters are hence estimated prior to model calibration against runoff. The new storage routine is implemented in the parameter parsimonious distance distribution dynamics (DDD) model and has been tested for 73 catchments in Norway of varying size, mean elevation and landscape type. Runoff simulations for the 73 catchments from two model structures (DDD with calibrated subsurface storage and DDD with the new estimated subsurface storage) were compared. Little loss in precision of runoff simulations was found using the new estimated storage routine. For the 73 catchments, an average of the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency criterion of 0.73 was obtained using the new estimated storage routine compared with 0.75 using calibrated storage routine. The average Kling-Gupta efficiency criterion was 0.80 and 0.81 for the new and old storage routine, respectively. Runoff recessions are more realistically modelled using the new approach since the root mean square error between the mean of observed and simulated recession characteristics was reduced by almost 50 % using the new storage routine. The parameters of the proposed storage routine are found to be significantly correlated to catchment characteristics, which is potentially useful for predictions in ungauged basins.

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Streamflow sensitivity to water storage changes across Europe

Cited by 66 publications

References 46 publications

Event-scale power law recession analysis: quantifying methodological uncertainty

Event-scale power law recession analysis: quantifying methodological uncertainty

Enhanced groundwater recharge rates and altered recharge sensitivity to climate variability through subsurface heterogeneity

Estimating catchment-scale groundwater dynamics from recession analysis – enhanced constraining of hydrological models

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