Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Majid Hosseini

Assistant Professor, Soil Conservation and Watershed Management Research Institute, Iran

Abstract

In this study, a simulation has been performed using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model with the data of the Ghare-sou watershed. The main objective of the study was testing the performance of SWAT and its feasibility to simulate the water balance in this watershed. Required data such as soil properties, land use and topographic maps were collected from the Natural Resource Office of Kermanshah province, and the weather data, including daily rainfall, temperature, relative humidity and discharge were collected from Meteorology Agency and regional water company of the province. Before calibration, a sensitivity analysis has been performed for all parameters, using OAT (One parameter At a Time) method to evaluate and demonstrate the influences of the model parameters on four major components of water budget including surface runoff, lateral flow, groundwater and evapotranspiration. Calibration and validation of the model were performed using the SUFI2 algorithm. River discharge data from 1982 to 2000 were used for the calibration and those of 2001 to 2005 for the validation. Different criteria were used to evaluate the performance of the simulation. During calibration, the simulated flow matched the observed values with a Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient of 0.56 and a coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.6. These values were 0.6 and 0.65 during the validation. The calibrated SWAT model is suggested to be used in simulation of the monthly flow of the Ghare-Sou watershed, in order to assess the impacts of different management practices and environment changes on the flow.

Keywords

• OAT
• Rainfall data
• SUFI2 algorithm
• Sensitivity analysis
• Validation