Hydrologic-Land Surface Modelling of a Complex System under
Precipitation Uncertainty: A Case Study of the Saskatchewan River Basin,
Canada
Abstract
Hydrologic-Land Surface Models (H-LSMs) have been progressively
developed to a stage where they represent the dominant hydrological
processes for a variety of hydrological regimes and include a range of
water management practices, and are increasingly used to simulate water
storages and fluxes of large basins under changing environmental
conditions across the globe. However, efforts for comprehensive
evaluation of the utility of H-LSMs in large, regulated watersheds have
been limited. In this study, we evaluated the capability of a Canadian
H-LSM, called MESH, in the highly regulated Saskatchewan River Basin
(SaskRB), Canada, under the constraint of significant precipitation
uncertainty. A comprehensive analysis of the MESH model performance was
carried out in two steps. First, the reliability of multiple
precipitation products was evaluated against climate station
observations and based on their performance in simulating streamflow
across the basin when forcing the MESH model with a default
parameterization. Second, a state-of-the-art multi-criteria calibration
approach was applied, using various observational information including
streamflow, storage and fluxes for calibration and validation. The first
analysis shows that the quality of precipitation products had a direct
and immediate impact on simulation performance for the basin headwaters
but effects were dampened when going downstream. The subsequent analyses
show that the MESH model was able to capture observed responses of
multiple fluxes and storage across the basin using a global
multi-station calibration method. Despite poorer performance in some
basins, the global parameterization generally achieved better model
performance than a default model parameterization. Validation using
storage anomaly and evapotranspiration generally showed strong
correlation with observations, but revealed potential deficiencies in
the simulation of storage anomaly over open water areas. Keywords:
Precipitation Uncertainty, Hydrologic-Land Surface Models,
multi-criteria calibration, storage and fluxes validation, Saskatchewan
River Basin, Canada