Abstract
Contemporary requirements of environment protection created the need to study the hydrological regime of those catchments in which valuable and endangered wetland habitats exist. In consequence, water management scenarios are elaborated which contribute to restoration of those habitats. Keeping desired wetland status by means of water management was possible when the factors influencing catchment runoff process have been recognized. The example of the catchment, in which the swamps and the peatlands have gained high protection status, is the Biebrza River, located in North-Eastern Poland. The factors which influence the runoff of the Biebrza River alone, were subject to a wide range of research, while the runoff process in the Biebrza tributaries has not yet been well recognized. In the Upper Basin of the Biebrza River the main tributaries are: the Sidra River and the Kamienna River. For the catchment areas of those rivers WetSpa model was applied for runoff simulation basing on soil-atmosphere-plant mass balance at a catchment scale. Hydrological processes simulated included: precipitation, evapotranspiration, plant canopy interception, soil interception, infiltration and capillary rise, ground water flow. Global model parameters were calibrated for the catchment of the Kamienna River and for the catchment of the Sidra River and the comparison was made for the values of global parameters for each catchment. The model quality was verified on the independent data set. The model performance was estimated to be satisfactory for high flows, but unsatisfactory for low flows in both catchments. The differences in the runoff process for both catchments concerned climatic factors, influencing evapotranspiration, precipitation and snow thawing.
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Financial support was received from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education as part of the research project N30505232/1917 is greatly appreciated.
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Porretta-Brandyk, L., Chormański, J., Brandyk, A., Okruszko, T. (2011). Automatic Calibration of the WetSpa Distributed Hydrological Model for Small Lowland Catchments. In: Świątek, D., Okruszko, T. (eds) Modelling of Hydrological Processes in the Narew Catchment. Geoplanet: Earth and Planetary Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19059-9_3
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