Parameters determination of a conceptual rainfall-runoff model for a small catchment in Carpathians

Abstract

Abstract Parameters determination of a conceptual rainfall-runoff model for a small catchment in Carpathians. One of the most important tasks in hydrology is to simulate and forecast hydrologic processes and variables. To achieve this, various linear and nonlinear hydrologic models were developed. One of the most commonly applied rainfall-runoff models is the Nash’s model of the Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph (IUH) (Nash, 1957) used jointly with the CN-NRCS method. Within this paper, the Nash’s model was applied to a small forested basin (Vištucký Creek, Slovakia) to reconstruct rainfall-runoff events based on the recorded precipitation. The Vištucký Creek catchment, located in the Little Carpathians, is a part of the flood protection management of regional sites in the Little Carpathians. Therefore, the object of this paper is, first, to determine the parameters of a conceptual rainfall-runoff model for the Vištucký creek catchment, second, to analyse how the selected characteristics of the model depend on the rainfall characteristics, and third, to compare obtained results with a similar study of Sikorska and Banasik (2010). The computer programme developed at the Dept. of Water Engineering (WULS-SGGW) was used to obtain the rainfall-runoff characteristics based on the Nash´s model. The derived characteristics were parameters of the Nash’s model (N, k, lag time) and rainfall-runoff characteristics (sum of total and effective precipitation, rainfall duration, runoff coefficient, time to IUH peak, value of IUH peak, goodness of fit). A relatively small effective precipitation from the rainfall events was derived. For the purpose of the analysis, a correlation between the lag time (and k parameter) and the sum of the total and effective precipitation was used. The use of the conceptual rainfall-runoff model (Nash´s model) for the small catchment in Carpathians was proved to give satisfactory results. The rainfall characteristics derived in this study are comparable to the results obtained by Spál et. al (2011), who used the same catchment in their analysis. Interestingly, our analysis indicated that there is a correlation between the rainfall duration and the lag time, what is opposite to the compared results of Sikorska and Banasik (2010).