A Guideline for Successful Calibration and Uncertainty Analysis for Soil and Water Assessment: A Review of Papers from the 2016 International SWAT Conference Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2017 by the authors. Application of integrated hydrological models to manage a watershed's water resources are increasingly finding their way into the decision-making processes. The Soil andWater Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a multi-process model integrating hydrology, ecology, agriculture, and water quality. SWAT is a continuation of nearly 40 years of modeling efforts conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS). A large number of SWAT-related papers have appeared in ISI journals, building a world-wide consensus around the model's stability and usefulness. The current issue is a collection of the latest research using SWAT as the modeling tool. Most models must undergo calibration/validation and uncertainty analysis. Unfortunately, these sciences are not formal subjects of teaching in most universities and the students are often left to their own resources to calibrate their model. In this paper, we focus on calibration and uncertainty analysis highlighting some serious issues in the calibration of distributed models. A protocol for calibration is also highlighted to guide the users to obtain better modeling results. Finally, a summary of the papers published in this special issue is provided in the Appendix.

published proceedings

  • WATER

author list (cited authors)

  • Abbaspour, K. C., Vaghefi, S. A., & Srinivasan, R.

citation count

  • 185

complete list of authors

  • Abbaspour, Karim C||Vaghefi, Saeid Ashraf||Srinivasan, Raghvan

publication date

  • December 2018

publisher