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Simulating the daily discharge of the Mandovi River, west coast of India

DRS at CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography

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Title Simulating the daily discharge of the Mandovi River, west coast of India
 
Creator Suprit, K.
Shankar, D.
Venugopal, V.
Bhatkar, N.V.
 
Subject hydrology
river discharge
mathematical models
 
Description A hydrological modelling framework was assembled to simulate the daily discharge of the Mandovi River on the Indian west coast. Approximately 90% of the west-coast rainfall, and therefore discharge, occurs during the summer monsoon (June–September), with a peak during July–August. The modelling framework consisted of a digital elevation model (DEM) called GLOBE, a hydrological routing algorithm, the Terrestrial Hydrological Model with Biogeochemistry (THMB), an algorithm to map the rainfall recorded by sparse rain-gauges to the model grid, and a modified Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN) method. A series of discharge simulations (with and without the SCS method) was carried out. The best simulation was obtained after incorporating spatio-temporal variability in the SCS parameters, which was achieved by an objective division of the season into five regimes: the lean season, monsoon onset, peak monsoon, end-monsoon, and post-monsoon. A novel attempt was made to incorporate objectively the different regimes encountered before, during and after the Indian monsoon, into a hydrological modelling framework. The strength of our method lies in the low demand it makes on hydrological data. Apart from information on the average soil type in a region, the entire parameterization is built on the basis of the rainfall that is used to force the model. That the model does not need to be calibrated separately for each river is important, because most of the Indian west-coast basins are ungauged. Hence, even though the model has been validated only for the Mandovi basin, its potential region of application is considerable. In the context of the Prediction in Ungauged Basins (PUB) framework, the potential of the proposed approach is significant, because the discharge of these (ungauged) rivers into the eastern Arabian Sea is not small, making them an important element of the local climate system.
 
Date 2012-06-05T07:03:22Z
2012-06-05T07:03:22Z
2012
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Hydrological Sciences Journal, vol.57(4); 2012; 686-704
no
http://drs.nio.org/drs/handle/2264/4070
 
Language en
 
Relation Hydrol_Sci_J_57_686.jpg
 
Rights © 2012 CSIR-NIO
 
Publisher Taylor & Francis