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- Title
Simulating Flash Floods at Hourly Time-Step Using the SWAT Model.
- Authors
Boithias, Laurie; Sauvage, Sabine; Lenica, Anneli; Roux, Hélène; Abbaspour, Karim C.; Larnier, Kévin; Dartus, Denis; Sánchez-Pérez, José Miguel
- Abstract
Flash floods are natural phenomena with environmental, social and economic impacts. To date, few numerical models are able to simulate hydrological processes at catchment scale at a reasonable time scale to describe flash events with accurate details. Considering a ~810 km² Mediterranean river coastal basin (southwestern France) as a study case, the objective of the present study was to assess the ability of the sub-daily module of the lumped Soil andWater Assessment Tool (SWAT) to simulate discharge (1) time-continuously, by testing two sub-basin delineation schemes, two catchment sizes, and two output time-steps; and (2) at flood time-scale, by comparing the performances of SWAT to the performances of the event-based fully distributed MARINE model when simulating flash flood events. We showed that there was no benefit of decreasing the size of the minimum drainage area (e.g., from ~15 km² down to ~1 km²) when delineating sub-basins in SWAT. We also showed that both the MARINE and SWAT models were equally able to reproduce peak discharge, flood timing and volume, and that they were both limited by rainfall and soil data. Hence, the SWAT model appears to be a reliable modelling tool to predict discharge over long periods of time in large flash-flood-prone basins.
- Subjects
MEDITERRANEAN Sea; FLOODS; HYDROLOGY; WATERSHEDS; RUNOFF
- Publication
Water (20734441), 2017, Vol 9, Issue 12, p929
- ISSN
2073-4441
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3390/w9120929