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Jing Tang

Researcher

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Informing the SWAT model with remote sensing detected vegetation phenology for improved modeling of ecohydrological processes

Author

  • Shouzhi Chen
  • Yongshuo H. Fu
  • Zhaofei Wu
  • Fanghua Hao
  • Zengchao Hao
  • Yahui Guo
  • Xiaojun Geng
  • Xiaoyan Li
  • Xuan Zhang
  • Jing Tang
  • Vijay P. Singh
  • Xuesong Zhang
Show all

Summary, in English

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model has been widely applied for simulating the water cycle and quantifying the influence of climate change and anthropogenic activities on hydrological processes. A major uncertainty of SWAT stems from the poor representation of vegetation dynamics due to the use of a simplistic vegetation growth and development module. Using long-term remote sensing-based phenological data, the SWAT model's vegetation module was improved by adding a dynamic growth start date and the dynamic heat requirement for vegetation growth rather than using constant values. The new SWAT model was verified in the Han River basin, China, and found its performance was much improved in comparison with that of the original SWAT model. Specifically, the accuracy of the leaf area index (LAI) simulation improved notably (coefficient of determination (R2) increased by 0.193, Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) increased by 0.846, and percent bias decreased by 42.18 %), and that of runoff simulation improved modestly (R2 increased by 0.05 and NSE was similar). Additionally, it is found that the original SWAT model substantially underestimated evapotranspiration (Penman-Monteith method) in comparison with the new SWAT model (65.09 mm (or 22.17 %) for forests, 92.27 mm (or 32 %) for orchards, and 96.16 mm (or 36.4 %) for farmland), primarily due to the inaccurate representation of LAI dynamics. Our results suggest that an accurate representation of phenological dates in the vegetation growth module is important for improving the SWAT model performance in terms of estimating terrestrial water and energy balance.

Department/s

  • LTH Profile Area: Aerosols
  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system

Publishing year

2023-01

Language

English

Publication/Series

Journal of Hydrology

Volume

616

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Oceanography, Hydrology, Water Resources
  • Remote Sensing

Keywords

  • LAI simulation
  • Runoff
  • SWAT modification
  • Vegetation phenology

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0022-1694