Optimization of the Hydrologic Response Units (HRU) using gridded
meteorological data and spatially varying parameters
Abstract
Although complex hydrological models with detailed physics are every day
more common, lumped and semi-distributed models are still used for many
applications and offer some advantages as its reduced computational
cost. Most of these semi-distributed models use the concept of
Hydrological Response Unit or HRU. In its original conception, HRUs are
defined as homogeneous structured elements having similar climate,
land-use, soil and/or pedotransfer properties, hence a homogeneous
hydrological response under equivalent meteorological forcing. This work
presents a quantitative methodology to construct HRUs based on Principal
Component Analysis and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis of gridded
meteorological data and hydrological parameters. The methodology is
tested using the Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP) model for
the Alicahue River Basin, a small catchment in Central Andes, in Central
Chile. The results show that with four HRUs it is possible to reduce up
to about a 10% the relative within variance of the catchment, an
indicator of homogeneity of the HRUs. Evaluation of the simulations show
a good agreement with streamflow observations in the outlet of the
catchment with a NSE value of 0.79 and also show the presence of small
hydrological extreme areas that generally are neglected due to their
relative size.