Regionalization of a distributed hydrological model using 25 catchments on Vancouver Island
Subject
Abstract
Although Vancouver Island water supply has considerable reliance on surface water, catchments remain predominately ungauged and hydrologically data poor. The objective of this study is to enhance the understanding of hydrological model processes and advance regionalization of a distributed water balance model for potential application to runoff prediction in ungauged catchments. Ultimately, the current study contributes a regionalized distributed climate water balance that can be reliably employed for monthly runoff prediction in Pluvial and Hybrid catchments on Vancouver Island from 1981-2010. However, the study could not find sufficiently acceptable performance for Nival catchments through calibration. Precipitation and runoff spatiotemporal trends with implications on model performance are analyzed and discussed. Lastly, further research suggestions targeting model improvement and regionalization are provided.