Title
Satellite-Based Evapotranspiration in Hydrological Model Calibration
Abstract
Hydrological models are usually calibrated against observed streamflow (Q(obs)), which is not applicable for ungauged river basins. A few studies have exploited remotely sensed evapotranspiration (ETRS) for model calibration but their effectiveness on streamflow simulation remains uncertain. This paper investigates the use of ETRS in the hydrological calibration of a widely used land surface model coupled with a source-sink routing scheme and global optimization algorithm for 28 natural river basins. A baseline simulation is a setup based on the latest model developments and inputs. Sensitive parameters are determined for Q(obs) and ETRS-based model calibrations, respectively, through comprehensive sensitivity tests. The ETRS-based model calibration results in a mean Kling-Gupta Efficiency (KGE) value of 0.54 for streamflow simulation; 61% of the river basins have KGE > 0.5 in the validation period, which is consistent with the calibration period and provides a significant improvement over the baseline. Compared to Q(obs), the ETRS calibration produces better or similar streamflow simulations in 29% of the basins, while further significant improvements are achieved when either better ET or precipitation observations are used. Furthermore, the model results show better or similar performance in 68% of the basins and outperform the baseline simulations in 90% of the river basins using model parameters from the best ETRS calibration runs. This study confirms that with reasonable precipitation input, the ETRS-based spatially distributed calibration can efficiently tune parameters for better ET and streamflow simulations. The application of ETRS for global scale hydrological model calibration promises even better streamflow accuracy as the satellite-based ETRS observations continue to improve.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.3390/rs12030428
REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
Field
DocType
hydrological model,calibration,remote sensing,evapotranspiration,ungauged river basins
Satellite,Remote sensing,Geology,Evapotranspiration,Calibration
Journal
Volume
Issue
Citations 
12
3
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Lulu Jiang100.34
Huan Wu201.35
Jing Tao300.34
John S. Kimball449050.16
Lorenzo Alfieri500.34
Xiuwan Chen63318.04