Simple Water Balance Tools for Scarce Hydrology Data?

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Are there any ​simple tools to ​calculate the ​basic water ​balance for a ​region despite ​the lack of ​hydrology data?​  ​

We would like ​to do ​calculations ​although we ​have very ​little data for ​rainfall/river ​discharge ​measurements ​and meteorological ​data (​evapotranspiration​)​.  ​

How can we do ​these ​calculations? ​

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5 Answers

  1. Dear Rajesh,

    Today, more and more satellite data sets on rainfall, evapotranspiration and other hydrological variable are freely available from several Internet. These permits simple spatial water balancing exercises to be made. Sparse ground observations or data can be used to check or bias control the In many semiarid regions of the world, surface water provides a major source of water supply. River runoff occurring during the rainy season is stored in surface reservoirs to sustain human, agricultural and industrial water use during the dry season. The reservoirs are interconnected via the river network, mutually influencing their inflow and outflow volumes. Rain and snowfall are key components of land surface models, including the Land Data Assimilation Systems (LDAS),  investigations into how water and energy cycle through natural systems, as well as monitoring water for human activities. I recently tested TRMM version 7 precipitation data and temperature from CFSR reanalysis dataset (to compute potential evapotranspiration using Hargreaves-Samani method) to compute discharges using a hydrological model in the Mekong river catchment in South-East Asia
     

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292150890_Thornthwaite_Mather_1955_The_Water_Balance_-_Multiple_Years_Worksheet

     

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fao.org%2Fnr%2Fwater%2Feto.html

     

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hydrology.bee.cornell.edu%2FBEE3710Handouts%2FTM2013.pdf

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294705234_Palmer_1965_Z-index_and_Water_Balance_-_Multiple_Years_Worksheet?ev=prf_pub

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fwwwbrr.cr.usgs.gov%2Fprojects%2FSW_MoWS%2FThornthwaite.html

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fpubs.usgs.gov%2Fof%2F2007%2F1088%2Fpdf%2Fof07-1088_508.pdf

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/https%3A%2F%2Fwww2.unece.org%2Fehlm%2Fplatform%2Fdownload%2Fattachments%2F31522834%2F6_Mokin%2526Greben_OSCE-WM-balance%2520project7.pdf%3Fversion%3D1%26modificationDate%3D1405930435016%26api%3Dv2

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hydrology.uni-kiel.de%2Fforschung%2Fprojekte%2Fsimpel%2Fsimpel-bodenwasserhaushaltsmodelle

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fcran.r-project.org%2Fweb%2Fpackages%2FEcoHydRology%2FEcoHydRology.pdf

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fadmin.forestthreats.org%2Fproducts%2Fpublications%2FA_general_predictive_model_for_estimating_.pdf

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vub.ac.be%2FWetSpa%2Fdownloads%2FWetSpa_manual.pdf

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fonlinelibrary.wiley.com%2Fdoi%2F10.1002%2F2013JD020941%2Fabstract

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fonlinelibrary.wiley.com%2Fdoi%2F10.1002%2F2013JD020941%2Fabstract

    https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hydrology.bee.cornell.edu%2FEcohydrology%2FHandouts%2FTM10.pdf

     

  2. For small catchment is very offten used SCS CN method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runoff_curve_number