Performance of evapotranspiration methods for hydrological simulations using SWAT in a subtropical and sub-humid catchment of India

Authors

  • Dwarika Mohan Das Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Jagatsinghpur, OUAT, Bhubaneswar Author
  • Sanjay Kumar Raul College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar Author
  • Bharat Chandra Sahoo College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar Author
  • Jagadish Chandra Paul College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar Author
  • Sangeeta Bhuyan College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar Author
  • Soubhgya Laxmi Ray College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar Author
  • Dikshya Nayak College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar Author
  • Ansuman Pati College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar Author
  • Abinash Dalei Swami Vivekanand College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Raipur Author
  • Chinmaya Panda Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Author

Keywords:

Hargreaves method, Penman-monteith method, Priestly-taylor method, PET, Streamflow, SWAT

Abstract

Selection of effective methods of evapotranspiration (ET) estimation has become a vital task in hydrological simulations using soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) at watershed scale. These methods are mostly selected based on input data availability and their applicability at regional scale. In this study, three potential evapotranspiration (PET) methods namely, hargreaves method (HA), penman-monteith (PM) method and priestly-taylor (PT) method inbuilt in the SWAT model were evaluated with the available climatic data of Kantamal catchment in Eastern India. The model performance in each case was tested by matching the simulated streamflow with the observed ones. The HA method was found to be the most suitable one with R2, NSE, PBIAS and RMSE values of 0.94, 0.88, -17.0 and 217.6 m3s-1 during calibration period, and 0.87, 0.83, -16.0 and 204. 08 m3s-1 during the validation period, respectively. PM and HA methods demonstrated comparable performance in simulating streamflow, however, the PT method exhibited lower performance compared to other two methods, indicating that it is not recommended for hydrological simulation studies using SWAT under similar agro-climatic conditions.

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Published

2024-12-11

Issue

Vol. 51 No. 3 (2023)

Section

Articles