1.
Winterdahl, Mattias, et al.
(författare)
Riparian soil temperature modification of the relationship between flow and dissolved organic carbon concentration in a boreal stream
2011
Ingår i: Water resources research. - 0043-1397 .- 1944-7973. ; 47
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Discharge is often strongly correlated to the temporal variability of dissolved organic carbon concentrations ([DOC]) in watercourses. One recently proposed way to model this is the riparian flow-concentration integration model (RIM) concept that accounts for the role of flow pathway control on [DOC] dynamics in streams. However, in boreal systems, there is also commonly a seasonal pattern, which cannot be explained by variability in discharge alone. The objectives with this study were to (1) demonstrate RIM as a tool for studying variability in stream water chemistry, (2) investigate factors related to stream water DOC variability, and (3) modify RIM to account for these factors. RIM was used with 14 years of daily discharge and almost 500 stream measurements of [DOC] from a forested boreal headwater stream. We used the calibrated RIM to account for discharge influences and then investigated variables that could be related to DOC variability (air and soil temperature, soil moisture, precipitation, antecedent flow and stream sulfate). Five alternative formulations of RIM, with temporally varying soil concentration profiles based on the variability in soil temperature and/or antecedent flow, were evaluated. The model where only the effects of riparian soil temperature on dynamics in DOC depth profiles were included performed best overall. This dynamic RIM improved the Nash-Sutcliffe to 0.58 compared to 0.42 for the flow-only formulation and reduced the median absolute error from 3.0 to 2.1 mg L (-1). This study demonstrates that RIM is a simple way of modeling stream DOC and exploring controls on stream water chemistry.
2.
Gebrehiwot, Solomon Gebreyohannis, et al.
(författare)
The long-term hydrology of East Africa's water tower : statistical change detection in the watersheds of the Abbay Basin
2014
Ingår i: Regional Environmental Change. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1436-3798 .- 1436-378X. ; 14:1, s. 321-331
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Forty-five years (1960-2004) of hydrological data from 12 watersheds in the Abbay Basin, Ethiopia, were tested for possible trends over the entire time series and differences in medians (step-wise changes) between three sub-periods. The classification of the sub-periods was based on the major political changes in 1975 and 1991. Variables investigated were rainfall (P), total flow (Q(t)), high flow (Q(h)), low flow (Q(1)), low flow index (LFI) and run-off coefficient (C). Data were checked for outliers, errors and homogeneity. Trend was tested after serial and cross-correlation tests. The data for each variable were serially uncorrelated from 1 to 10 lag years. There were five globally significant trends out of 50 test cases and 36 significant step-wise changes out of 180 tests. The majority of the significant changes were watershed specific. Run-off coefficient was the single variable showing a consistently increasing trend and stood for ca. 25 % of the total significant trends and step-wise changes. Half of these changes occurred after 1991. We concluded that despite the land use policy changes in 1975 and 1991, as well as the long-term soil degradation, the hydrological regime was quite stable over the 45-year period, with the exception of an increase in the run-off coefficient in the latter part of the run-off record in some watersheds.
3.
Geris, J., et al.
(författare)
Conceptual modelling to assess hydrological impacts and evaluate environmental flow scenarios in montane river systems regulated for hydropower
2014
Ingår i: Rivers Research and Applications. - : Wiley. - 1535-1459 .- 1535-1467.
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
To improve understanding of natural and managed flow regimes in data-sparse regulated river systems in montane areas, the commonly used Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalansavdelning (HBV) conceptual run-off model was adapted to incorporate water regulation components. The extended model was then applied to the heavily regulated river Lyon (391 km2) in Scotland to reconstruct the natural flow regime and to assess the impacts of regulation at increasing spatial scales. Multi-criteria model evaluation demonstrated that the model performed well in capturing the dominant catchment processes and regulation effects, especially at the timescales at which operation rules apply. The main change as a result of regulation in the river Lyon is a decrease in inter-annual and intra-annual variability of all elements of the flow regime, in terms of magnitude, frequency, and duration. Although these impacts are most pronounced directly downstream of the impoundments, the regulation effects propagate throughout the river system. The modelling approach is flexible and widely applicable and only limited amounts of data are required. Moreover, results are easily communicated to stakeholders. It has the potential to contribute to the development of flow regimes that may be more beneficial to the ecological status of rivers. In the case of the river Lyon, it is likely that this involves a more variable release regime. The approach developed here provides a tool for assessing impacts on flow regimes and informing environmental flows in other data-sparse regions with heavily regulated montane river systems. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
4.
Rinderer, M., et al.
(författare)
Topographic controls on shallow groundwater levels in a steep, prealpine catchment : When are the TWI assumptions valid?
2014
Ingår i: Water resources research. - 0043-1397 .- 1944-7973. ; 50:7, s. 6067-6080
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Topographic indices like the Topographic Wetness Index (TWI) have been used to predict spatial patterns of average groundwater levels and to model the dynamics of the saturated zone during events (e. g., TOPMODEL). However, the assumptions underlying the use of the TWI in hydrological models, of which the most important is that groundwater level variation can be approximated by a series of steady state situations, are rarely tested. It is also not clear how well findings from existing hillslope studies on sites with transmissive soil can be transferred to entire catchments with less permeable soils. This study, therefore, evaluated the suitability of selected topographic indices to describe spatial groundwater level variations based on time series from 51 groundwater wells in a 20 ha catchment with low-permeability soils in Switzerland. Results showed that median groundwater levels were correlated to slope, curvature, and TWI, but the strength of correlation depended on whether the indices characterized the local topography or the topography of the upslope contributing area. The correlation between TWI and groundwater levels was not constant over time but decreased at the beginning of rainfall events, indicating large spatial differences in groundwater responses, and increased after peak flow, when groundwater levels could be considered to be spatially in a steady state. Our findings indicate that topographic indices are useful to predict median groundwater levels in catchments with low-permeability soils and that the TWI assumptions are best met when groundwater levels change slowly.
5.
Sikorska, A. E., et al.
(författare)
Effective precipitation duration for runoff peaks based on catchment modelling
2018
Ingår i: Journal of Hydrology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0022-1694 .- 1879-2707. ; 556, s. 510-522
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Despite precipitation intensities may greatly vary during one flood event, detailed information about these intensities may not be required to accurately simulate floods with a hydrological model which rather reacts to cumulative precipitation sums. This raises two questions: to which extent is it important to preserve sub-daily precipitation intensities and how long does it effectively rain from the hydrological point of view? Both questions might seem straightforward to answer with a direct analysis of past precipitation events but require some arbitrary choices regarding the length of a precipitation event. To avoid these arbitrary decisions, here we present an alternative approach to characterize the effective length of precipitation event which is based on runoff simulations with respect to large floods. More precisely, we quantify the fraction of a day over which the daily precipitation has to be distributed to faithfully reproduce the large annual and seasonal floods which were generated by the hourly precipitation rate time series. New precipitation time series were generated by first aggregating the hourly observed data into daily totals and then evenly distributing them over sub-daily periods (n hours). These simulated time series were used as input to a hydrological bucket-type model and the resulting runoff flood peaks were compared to those obtained when using the original precipitation time series. We define then the effective daily precipitation duration as the number of hours n, for which the largest peaks are simulated best. For nine mesoscale Swiss catchments this effective daily precipitation duration was about half a day, which indicates that detailed information on precipitation intensities is not necessarily required to accurately estimate peaks of the largest annual and seasonal floods. These findings support the use of simple disaggregation approaches to make usage of past daily precipitation observations or daily precipitation simulations (e.g. from climate models) for hydrological modeling at an hourly time step.
6.
Lyon, Steve, et al.
(författare)
Variability of groundwater levels and total organic carbon in the riparian zone of a boreal catchment
2011
Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research. - : American Geophysical Union (AGU). - 0148-0227 .- 2156-2202. ; 116:G01020
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
The riparian zone is a narrow corridor where hillslopes (and their associated hydrobiogeochemical processes) interface with the river system. As such, the riparian zone serves as the last piece of landscape with which water interacts as it transitions from being water flowing primarily through the landscape (i.e., shallow groundwater) to water flowing primarily on the landscape (i.e., stream water). This study investigates the spatiotemporal variability in riparian-zone soil water total organic carbon (TOC) and its relation to the shallow groundwater table using observations from the recently instrumented riparian observatory in the Krycklan catchment study area located in boreal northern Sweden. In general, there is a decrease in TOC concentration with depth down through the soil profile. The rate of this decrease was variable among the six monthly samplings used in this study. The spatial variability of soil water TOC in the riparian zone was connected to the spatial variability of the shallow groundwater levels. This demonstrated the importance of the temporal variation of flow pathways and the mixing of waters from different sources of TOC moving into and through the riparian zone. The coupled variation of the hydrologic and biogeochemical systems raised questions about the ability of simple lumped approaches to accurately predict how in-stream TOC concentrations will change with climate and/or land use. The integrated sampling approach in the riparian observatory covers both hydrologic and biogeochemical aspects of soil water TOC and provides a basis for development and testing of distributed, physically based transport models.
7.
Archfield, Stacey A., et al.
(författare)
Accelerating advances in continental domain hydrologic modeling
2015
Ingår i: Water resources research. - 0043-1397 .- 1944-7973. ; 51:12, s. 10078-10091
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
In the past, hydrologic modeling of surface water resources has mainly focused on simulating the hydrologic cycle at local to regional catchment modeling domains. There now exists a level of maturity among the catchment, global water security, and land surface modeling communities such that these communities are converging toward continental domain hydrologic models. This commentary, written from a catchment hydrology community perspective, provides a review of progress in each community toward this achievement, identifies common challenges the communities face, and details immediate and specific areas in which these communities can mutually benefit one another from the convergence of their research perspectives. Those include: (1) creating new incentives and infrastructure to report and share model inputs, outputs, and parameters in data services and open access, machine-independent formats for model replication or reanalysis; (2) ensuring that hydrologic models have: sufficient complexity to represent the dominant physical processes and adequate representation of anthropogenic impacts on the terrestrial water cycle, a process-based approach to model parameter estimation, and appropriate parameterizations to represent large-scale fluxes and scaling behavior; (3) maintaining a balance between model complexity and data availability as well as uncertainties; and (4) quantifying and communicating significant advancements toward these modeling goals.
8.
Bishop, Kevin, et al.
(författare)
Water storage in a till catchment. II : Implications of transmissivity feedback for flow paths and turnover times
2011
Ingår i: Hydrological Processes. - : Wiley. - 0885-6087 .- 1099-1085. ; 25:25, s. 3950-3959
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
This paper explores the flow paths and turnover times within a catchment characterized by the transmissivity feedback mechanism where there is a strong increase in the saturated hydraulic conductivity towards the soil surface and precipitation inputs saturate progressively more superficial layers of the soil profile. The analysis is facilitated by the correlation between catchment water storage and groundwater levels, which made it possible to model the daily spatial distribution of water storage, both vertically in different soil horizons and horizontally across a 6300-m2 till catchment. Soil properties and episodic precipitation input dynamics, combined with the influence of topographic features, concentrate flow in the horizontal, vertical, and temporal dimensions. Within the soil profile, there was a vertical concentration of lateral flow to superficial soil horizons (upper 30?cm of the soil), where much of the annual flow occurred during runoff episodes. Overland flow from a limited portion of the catchment can contribute to peak flows but is not a necessary condition for runoff episodes. The spatial concentration of flow, and the episodic nature of runoff events, resulted in a strong and spatially structured differentiation of local flow velocities within the catchment. There were large differences in the time spent by the laterally flowing water at different depths, with turnover times of lateral flow across a 1-m-wide soil pedon ranging from under 1?h at 10- to 20-cm depth to a month at 70- to 80-cm depth. In many regards, the hydrology of this catchment appears typical of the hydrology in till soils, which are widespread in Fenno-Scandia. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
9.
10.
Kruitbos, L. M., et al.
(författare)
Hydroclimatic and hydrochemical controls on Plecoptera diversity and distribution in northern freshwater ecosystems
2012
Ingår i: Hydrobiologia. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0018-8158 .- 1573-5117. ; 693:1, s. 39-53
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Freshwater ecosystems in the mid- to upper-latitudes of the northern hemisphere are particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change as slight changes in air temperature can alter the form, timing, and magnitude of precipitation and consequent influence of snowmelt on streamflow dynamics. Here, we examine the effects of hydro-climate, flow regime, and hydrochemistry on Plecoptera (stonefly) alpha (alpha) diversity and distribution in northern freshwater ecosystems. We characterized the hydroclimatic regime of seven catchments spanning a climatic gradient across the northern temperate region and compared them with estimates of Plecoptera genera richness. By a space-for-time substitution, we assessed how warmer temperatures and altered flow regimes may influence Plecoptera alpha diversity and composition at the genus level. Our results show wide hydroclimatic variability among sites, including differences in temporal streamflow dynamics and temperature response. Principal component analysis showed that Plecoptera genera richness was positively correlated with catchment relief (m), mean and median annual air temperature (A degrees C), and streamflow. These results provide a preliminary insight into how hydroclimatic change, particularly in terms of increased air temperature and altered streamflow regimes, may create future conditions more favorable to some Plecopteras in northern catchments.
