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Effect of watershed partitioning on hydrologic parameters and estimation of hydrograph of an ungauged basin: a case study in Gokirmak and Kocanaz, Turkey

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Abstract

The main goal of this study is to investigate the effect of the size of the subbasins of a watershed on the hydrologic parameters and their spatial variability in an estimation of the hydrologic parameters and hydrograph of a neighbouring ungauged basin. In this paper, Hydrologic Engineering Center-Hydrologic Modelling System (HEC-HMS), a semi-distributed hydrologic model, is used to calibrate and cross-validate two flood events occurred in 1998 and then validate four other flood events occurred in 1991, 1994, 2002, and 2009 in Gokirmak Basin in Western Black Sea Region, Turkey. The basin is divided into seven different subbasins to investigate the effect of watershed partitioning on calibrated hydrologic parameters of each subbasin using the peak-weighted root mean square error method as an objective function and the hydrograph at the outlet of the whole basin. It is found out that as the geometric magnitudes of the subbasins changed, the calibrated values of the hydrologic parameters of those subbasins changed as well. Then, a neighbouring basin, Kocanaz, is considered as an assumed neighbouring ungauged basin to investigate the effect of watershed partitioning of a gauged basin on the estimation of hydrograph of a neighbouring ungauged basin. Hydrologic parameters and direct runoff hydrograph of assumed ungauged neighbouring basin are estimated from the hydrologic parameters of the HEC-HMS calibration results of Gokirmak. Statistical indicators of the simulation results for each basin partitioning were graded with respect to the boundary values of the simulation outputs to find the best alternative. The grading results show that the simulation results with a single basin gave better representation among all other partitioning except two flood events.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) for their financial support (Project No. 114M292).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Gazi University, 06570, Ankara, Turkey

    Müsteyde Baduna Koçyiğit & Hüseyin Akay

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi, 06531, Ankara, Turkey

    Ali Melih Yanmaz

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  1. Müsteyde Baduna Koçyiğit
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  2. Hüseyin Akay
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Correspondence to Hüseyin Akay.

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Baduna Koçyiğit, M., Akay, H. & Yanmaz, A.M. Effect of watershed partitioning on hydrologic parameters and estimation of hydrograph of an ungauged basin: a case study in Gokirmak and Kocanaz, Turkey. Arab J Geosci 10, 331 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-017-3132-8

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