Temporal sampling strategies and uncertainty in calibrating a conceptual hydrological model for a small boreal catchment

Juston, John; Seibert, Jan; Johansson, Per-Olof

doi:10.1002/hyp.7421

Cited by 76 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Limited information content in discharge time series was also demonstrated by Juston et al (2009) and Seibert and Beven (2009), who found that calibration using a small fraction of data points chosen at hydrologically informed times was comparable to when the whole time series was used. We chose R eff for comparison with the FDC-calibration as it is sensitive to timing errors, well-known and commonly used.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Calibration of hydrological models using flow-duration curves

Westerberg

Guerrero

Younger

et al. 2011

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

241

243

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Abstract. The degree of belief we have in predictions from hydrologic models will normally depend on how well they can reproduce observations. Calibrations with traditional performance measures, such as the Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency, are challenged by problems including: (1) uncertain discharge data, (2) variable sensitivity of different performance measures to different flow magnitudes, (3) influence of unknown input/output errors and (4) inability to evaluate model performance when observation time periods for discharge and model input data do not overlap. This paper explores a calibration method using flow-duration curves (FDCs) to address these problems. The method focuses on reproducing the observed discharge frequency distribution rather than the exact hydrograph. It consists of applying limits of acceptability for selected evaluation points (EPs) on the observed uncertain FDC in the extended GLUE approach. Two ways of selecting the EPs were tested -based on equal intervals of discharge and of volume of water. The method was tested and compared to a calibration using the traditional model efficiency for the daily four-parameter WAS-MOD model in the Paso La Ceiba catchment in Honduras and for Dynamic TOPMODEL evaluated at an hourly time scale for the Brue catchment in Great Britain. The volume method of selecting EPs gave the best results in both catchments with better calibrated slow flow, recession and evaporation than the other criteria. Observed and simulated time Correspondence to: I. K. Westerberg (ida.westerberg@hyd.uu.se) series of uncertain discharges agreed better for this method both in calibration and prediction in both catchments. An advantage with the method is that the rejection criterion is based on an estimation of the uncertainty in discharge data and that the EPs of the FDC can be chosen to reflect the aims of the modelling application, e.g. using more/less EPs at high/low flows. While the method appears less sensitive to epistemic input/output errors than previous use of limits of acceptability applied directly to the time series of discharge, it still requires a reasonable representation of the distribution of inputs. Additional constraints might therefore be required in catchments subject to snow and where peak-flow timing at sub-daily time scales is of high importance. The results suggest that the calibration method can be useful when observation time periods for discharge and model input data do not overlap. The method could also be suitable for calibration to regional FDCs while taking uncertainties in the hydrological model and data into account.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Calibration of hydrological models using flow-duration curves

Westerberg

Guerrero

Younger

et al. 2011

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

241

243

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For instance, Wagener et al (2003) identify inconsistencies in the structure of a rainfall-runoff model by highlighting instabilities of the optimal values of the parameters between periods with and without rainfall events. In contrast, Juston et al (2009) found that data subset of their input data (from daily to quaterly sampling intervals) can provide very similar constraints on model calibration and parameter identification.…”

Section: What Hydrological Good Sense Suggestsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Spatial variability of the parameters of a semi-distributed hydrological model

Lavenne¹,

Thirel²,

Andréassian³

et al. 2016

Proc. IAHS

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Abstract. Ideally, semi-distributed hydrologic models should provide better streamflow simulations than lumped models, along with spatially-relevant water resources management solutions. However, the spatial distribution of model parameters raises issues related to the calibration strategy and to the identifiability of the parameters. To analyse these issues, we propose to base the evaluation of a semi-distributed model not only on its performance at streamflow gauging stations, but also on the spatial and temporal pattern of the optimised value of its parameters. We implemented calibration over 21 rolling periods and 64 catchments, and we analysed how well each parameter is identified in time and space. Performance and parameter identifiability are analysed comparatively to the calibration of the lumped version of the same model. We show that the semi-distributed model faces more difficulties to identify stable optimal parameter sets. The main difficulty lies in the identification of the parameters responsible for the closure of the water balance (i.e. for the particular model investigated, the intercatchment groundwater flow parameter).

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“…[2] The appropriate length of observation data for effective calibration of continuous hydrologic models has been a challenging research question [Andreassian et al, 2001;Gupta and Sorooshian, 1985;Juston et al, 2009;Perrin et al, 2007;Singh and Bardossy, 2012;Vrugt et al, 2006;Xia et al, 2004;Yapo et al, 1996]. In general, longer calibration periods are deemed more robust and reliable in identifying the model parameters and quantifying their uncertainty [Perrin et al, 2007].…”

Section: Motivation and Objectivementioning

confidence: 99%

An efficient framework for hydrologic model calibration on long data periods

Razavi

Tolson

2013

Water Resour. Res.

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.[1] Long periods of hydrologic data records have become available in many watersheds around the globe. Hydrologic model calibration on such long, full-length data periods is typically deemed the most robust approach for calibration but at larger computational costs. Determination of a representative short period as a ''surrogate'' of a long data period that sufficiently embeds its information content is not trivial and is a challenging research question. The representativeness of such a short period is not only a function of data characteristics but also model and calibration error function dependent. Unlike previous studies, this study goes beyond identifying the best surrogate data period to be used in model calibration and proposes an efficient framework that calibrates the hydrologic model to full-length data while running the model only on a short period for the majority of the candidate parameter sets. To this end, a mapping system is developed to approximate the model performance on the full-length data period based on the model performance for the short data period. The basic concepts and the promise of the framework are demonstrated through a computationally expensive hydrologic model case study. Three calibration approaches, namely calibration solely to a surrogate period, calibration to the full period, and calibration through the proposed framework, are evaluated and compared. Results show that within the same computational budget, the proposed framework leads to improved or equal calibration performance compared to the two conventional approaches. Results also indicate that model calibration solely to a short data period may lead to a range of performances from poor to very well depending on the representativeness of the short data period which is typically not known a priori.

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Temporal sampling strategies and uncertainty in calibrating a conceptual hydrological model for a small boreal catchment

Cited by 76 publications

References 36 publications

Calibration of hydrological models using flow-duration curves

Calibration of hydrological models using flow-duration curves

Spatial variability of the parameters of a semi-distributed hydrological model

An efficient framework for hydrologic model calibration on long data periods

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