Hydrological simulation of river basins at different spatial scales: 1. Generalization and averaging algorithms

Abstract

ECOlogical Model for Applied Geophysics have been used as a sample to develop algorithms for generalizing the description and parameters of moisture exchange in physically based runoff formation models when the spatial scale of the model is changed; the algorithms are based on the use of statistical distributions and various procedures of spatial averaging of land surface parameters depending on the algorithms used to calculate individual hydrological processes. The proposed algorithms make it possible to give a physical interpretation of some aggregated effective parameters of conceptual lumped-parameter hydrological models and, in some cases, to evaluate the errors caused by the spatial averaging of heterogeneities in land surface characteristics.