An Optimality-Based Fully-Distributed Watershed Ecohydrological Model

Abstract:

Watershed ecohydrological models are essential tools to assess the impact of climate change and human activities on hydrological and ecological processes for watershed management. Existing models can be classified as empirically based model, quasi-mechanistic and mechanistic models. The empirically based and quasi-mechanistic models usually adopt empirical or quasi-empirical equations, which may be incapable of capturing non-stationary dynamics of target processes. Mechanistic models that are designed to represent process feedbacks may capture vegetation dynamics, but often have more demanding spatial and temporal parameterization requirements to represent vegetation physiological variables. In recent years, optimality based ecohydrological models have been proposed which have the advantage of reducing the need for model calibration by assuming critical aspects of system behavior. However, this work to date has been limited to plot scale that only considers one-dimensional exchange of soil moisture, carbon and nutrients in vegetation parameterization without lateral hydrological transport. Conceptual isolation of individual ecosystem patches from upslope and downslope flow paths compromises the ability to represent and test the relationships between hydrology and vegetation in mountainous and hilly terrain. This work presents an optimality-based watershed ecohydrological model, which incorporates lateral hydrological process influence on hydrological flow-path patterns that emerge from the optimality assumption. The model has been tested in the Walnut Gulch watershed and shows good agreement with observed temporal and spatial patterns of evapotranspiration (ET) and gross primary productivity (GPP). Spatial variability of ET and GPP produced by the model match spatial distribution of TWI, SCA, and slope well over the area. Compared with the one dimensional vegetation optimality model (VOM), we find that the distributed VOM (DisVOM) produces more reasonable spatial distribution of evapotranspiration and GPP. The model provides the ability to couple ecosystem patches along hydrological flow paths, and allows the representation of space/time patterns, providing new methods of diagnosing model behavior with observations.