A Fully Coupled Surface Water Storage and Soil Water Dynamics Model for
Characterizing Hydroperiod of Geographically Isolated Wetlands
Abstract
Hydrological modeling of wetlands is important for reliable estimation
of biogeochemical processes in soils subject to periodically inundating
conditions. The present study has developed a wetland module in the
Richards-equation-based SWAT model to fully couple the surface water
storage and soil water dynamics. The wetland module was tested using
observed daily water level data from four wetlands (including restored
and natural wetlands with and without impermeable soil layers) in the
Choptank River Watershed, Maryland, USA. After the wetland module was
calibrated, simulated daily water level and observed data were compared
and evaluated using three statistics, i.e., percent bias (Pbias),
coefficient of determination (R2), and Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient (NS)
from 2016 to 2017. The results showed that, in general, the wetland
module regenerated hydroperiods for both restored and natural wetlands
with and without impermeable soil layers; specifically, the module was
able to accurately model saturation conditions for different soil layers
corresponding to wet and dry periods in plant growing seasons; the
wetland module had the tendency to generate better results for natural
wetlands because restored wetlands tended to have mixed plant types
which caused difficulty for accurate estimation of evapotranspiration;
the ability to accurately describe inundation conditions for wetlands is
important for biogeochemical modeling so that the newly developed
wetland module has a great potential in enhancing simulation of
biogeochemical cycles not only at the site scale but also at the
watershed scale.