Surface Depression and Wetland Water Storage Improves Major River Basin Hydrologic Predictions.

ABSTRACT: Surface water storage in small yet abundant landscape depressions-including wetlands and other small waterbodies-is largely disregarded in conventional hydrologic modeling practices. No quantitative evidence exists of how their exclusion may lead to potentially inaccurate model projections and understanding of hydrologic dynamics across the world's major river basins. To fill this knowledge gap, we developed the first-ever major river basin-scale modeling approach integrating surface depressions and focusing on the 450,000-km² Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) in the United States. We applied a novel topography-based algorithm to estimate areas and volumes of ~455,000 surface depressions (>1 ha) across the UMRB (in addition to lakes and reservoirs) and subsequently aggregated

SUBMITTER: Rajib A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7751708 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature