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Title: Integrating a reservoir regulation scheme into a spatially distributed hydrological model

Journal Article · · Advances in Water Resources
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [2];  [3]
  1. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
  2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  3. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

During the past several decades, numerous reservoirs have been built across the world for a variety of purposes such as flood control, irrigation, municipal/industrial water supplies, and hydropower generation. Consequently, timing and magnitude of natural streamflows have been altered significantly by reservoir operations. In addition, the hydrological cycle can be modified by land-use/land-cover and climate changes. To understand the fine-scale feedback between hydrological processes and water management decisions, a distributed hydrological model embedded with a reservoir component is desired. In this study, a multi-purpose reservoir module with predefined complex operational rules was integrated into the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM). Conditional operating rules, which are designed to reduce flood risk and enhance water supply reliability, were adopted in this module. The performance of the integrated model was tested over the upper Brazos River Basin in Texas, where two U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoirs, Lake Whitney and Aquilla Lake, are located. The integrated DHSVM was calibrated and validated using observed reservoir inflow, outflow, and storage data. The error statistics were summarized for both reservoirs on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Using the weekly reservoir storage for Lake Whitney as an example, the coefficient of determination (R2) and the Nash-Sutcliff Efficiency (NSE) were 0.85 and 0.75, respectively. These results suggest that this reservoir module holds promise for use in sub-monthly hydrological simulations. Furthermore, with the new reservoir component, the DHSVM provides a platform to support adaptive water resources management under the impacts of evolving anthropogenic activities and substantial environmental changes.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1337844
Journal Information:
Advances in Water Resources, Vol. 98, Issue C; ISSN 0309-1708
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 69 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (10)

The Impact of Reservoirs on Runoff Under Climate Change: A Case of Nierji Reservoir in China journal May 2019
Assessing the impacts of hydrologic and land use alterations on water temperature in the Farmington River basin in Connecticut journal January 2019
CMADS-Driven Simulation and Analysis of Reservoir Impacts on the Streamflow with a Simple Statistical Approach journal January 2019
Hydrological impact of a reservoir network in the upper Gan River Basin, China journal March 2019
Prediction of Reservoir Storage Anomalies in India journal April 2019
Quantifying Flood Frequency Modification Caused by Multi-Reservoir Regulation journal October 2019
Sensitivity of Probable Maximum Flood in a Changing Environment journal June 2018
Representation and improved parameterization of reservoir operation in hydrological and land-surface models journal January 2019
Evaluating next‐generation intensity–duration–frequency curves for design flood estimates in the snow‐dominated western United States journal December 2019
Using the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to Improve the Spatial Coverage of the MODIS Based Reservoir Monitoring Network in South Asia journal February 2020

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Related Subjects

13 HYDRO ENERGY
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
reservoir
DHSVM
water resources
operation rules