Large Sample Basin Experiments for Hydrological Model Parameterization: Results of the Model Parameter Experiment–MOPEX. IAHS Publ. 307, 2006, 135–148.
Distributed hydrological modelling with lumped
inputs
VINCENT FORTIN1, NANEE CHAHINIAN2, ALBERTO MONTANARI3, GRETA
MORETTI3 & ROGER MOUSSA4
1 Numerical Prediction Research, Meteorological Research Division, Environment Canada, 2121 North Service Road, Trans-Canada Highway, Dorval, Quebec H9P 1J3, Canada
2 Institut
de Recherche pour le Développement(IRD), UMR HydroSciences–Université
Montpellier II, Case Courrier MSE, Place Eugène Bataillon, F-34095 Montpellier
cedex 5, France
3 Università
di Bologna, Viale del Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy
4 Laboratoire
d'étude des Interactions entre Sol, Agrosystème et Hydrosystème (LISAH), INRA,
2 Place Pierre Viala, F-34060 Montpellier cedex 1, France
Abstract This paper presents three different spatially distributed hydrological models and discusses the possibility of using them for flow simulation when only lumped information is available for the meteorological input. The three models, namely, AFFDEF, HYDROTEL and ModSpa, are applied on three French catchments from the MOPEX database. The purpose of the study is to provide examples to support the use of spatially-distributed approaches for real world applications even when fully distributed information is not available. The use of distributed models is advisable when at least a piece of distributed information is available such as a digital elevation model, a soil map or land-use data as for the three catchments and the models considered in this study. Overall, the applications presented here show that spatially distributed models can be successfully applied by using mixed lumped/distributed information. The performance of the models is comparable with the results that are usually obtained in real world applications of lumped models in similar situations.
Key words
distributed models; lumped models; parameterization; ungauged catchments