unifhycontrib-smart 0.1.0

unifhy components for the SMART model

The Soil Moisture Accounting and Routing for Transport [SMART] model (Mockler et al., 2016) is a bucket-type rainfall-runoff model.

SMART is an enhancement of the SMARG (Soil Moisture Accounting and Routing with Groundwater) lumped, conceptual rainfall–runoff model developed at National University of Ireland, Galway (Kachroo, 1992), and based on the soil layers concept (O’Connell et al., 1970; Nash and Sutcliffe, 1970). Separate soil layers were introduced to capture the decline with soil depth in the ability of plant roots to extract water for evapotranspiration. SMARG was originally developed for flow modelling and forecasting and was incorporated into the Galway Real-Time River Flow Forecasting System [GFFS] (Goswami et al., 2005). The SMART model reorganised and extended SMARG to provide a basis for water quality modelling by separating explicitly the important flow pathways in a catchment.

The surface layer component of SMART consists in meeting the potential evapotranspiration demand either with rainfall alone under energy-limited conditions or with rainfall and soil moisture under water-limited conditions – throughfall is only generated under energy-limited conditions. Note, unlike the original SMART model, this component calculates the available soil moisture from the soil water stress coefficient provided by the sub-surface component – in the original SMART model, the available soil moisture is iteratively depreciated with soil layer depth. This unavoidable simplification may overestimate the soil moisture available compared to the original SMART model.

The sub-surface component of SMART comprises the runoff generation and land runoff routing processes. This sub-surface component is made up of six soil layers of equal depth and five linear reservoirs. The six soil layers are vertically connected to allow for percolation and evaporation. The five linear reservoirs represent the different pathways for land runoff. Note, the river routing of SMART is not included in this component.

The open water component of SMART consists in routing the streamflow through the river network by means of a linear reservoir.

contributors:

Thibault Hallouin [1,2], Eva Mockler [1,3], Michael Bruen [1]

affiliations:

1. Dooge Centre for Water Resources Research, University College Dublin

2. Department of Meteorology, University of Reading

3. Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency

licence:

GPL-3.0

copyright:

2020, University College Dublin