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Innovating on Hydrological Modelling Calibration Towards a Realistic Simulation of Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources

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Abstract

The plausible impacts of climate change threat water resources sustainability in Mediterranean regions, where they are already under pressure. Hydrological modelling might aid assessing this threat, but realistic models are needed to guarantee accurate simulations. This work presents a hydrological model for the Guajaraz River basin (central Spain) using SWAT+. This basin contains the homonym reservoir and supplies the historic city of Toledo. An innovative calibration procedure, “inverse calibration”, was designed towards achieving a model that simulates the hydrological processes realistically rather than just providing satisfactory metrics: hard calibration results were filtered by two soft indices, the runoff coefficient and the groundwater contribution, to constrain parameter values. The methodology was successful, solved model structural problems (i.e. equifinality) and yielded a realistic model to simulate climate change. Then, five out of sixteen climate models were selected after calculating a suitability index, and they were simulated under two emissions scenarios (mid and high) and two time horizons (mid and long term). As expected, results foresee more severe hydrological impacts for the high emissions scenario and towards the end of the 21st century, with an average decrease in reservoir inflow up to 28% (or even up to 35% when analysing median values). Results also reveal that quickflow will be more affected than baseflow. These insights might aid on decision-making towards sustainable water management in a region where studies of this kind are scarce.

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Data availability

All the datasets (GIS layers, climate information, reservoir inflow and streamflow of neighbour catchments) used for setting up, calibrate and verify the model are freely available in the references cited in the manuscript. Climate change projections can be obtained from the AdapteCCa website (see References). The code used to parameterize and calibrate the model is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This study has been supported by Suntory Holdings, Suntory Beverage and Food Spain under the “Guardianes del Tajo” project, through a research contract with Mediodes Consultoría Ambiental y Paisajismo S.L. (contract reference 2022/121). Alejandro Sánchez-Gómez received additional support from the University of Alcalá (UAH) PhD Fellowships Programme. The authors want to thank Christoph Schürz and Katrin Bieger for generously sharing their knowledge about SWAT+ calibration and SWATplusR application, and also Antonio Sastre Merlín and Miguel Martín-Loeches for their valuable comments about hydrogeological characteristics of the study area.

Funding

This work was supported by Suntory Holdings, Suntory Beverage and Food Spain under the “Guardianes del Tajo” project, through a research contract with Mediodes Consultoría Ambiental y Paisajismo S.L. (contract reference 2022/121). Author ASG has received research support from the University of Alcalá PhD Fellowships Programme.

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  1. Department of Geology, Geography and Environment, Faculty of Sciences, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

    Eugenio Molina-Navarro, Alejandro Sánchez-Gómez & Silvia Martínez-Pérez

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  1. Eugenio Molina-Navarro
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  2. Alejandro Sánchez-Gómez
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Silvia Martínez-Pérez was responsable of funding acquisition and project management. Data collection was performed by Alejandro Sánchez-Gómez and Eugenio Molina-Navarro, who also designed the calibration methodology. Alejandro Sánchez-Gómez was in charge of data curation, processing and representation. All authors analysed and discussed the results. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Eugenio Molina-Navarro and all authors commented and revised it, approving the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Eugenio Molina-Navarro.

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Molina-Navarro, E., Sánchez-Gómez, A. & Martínez-Pérez, S. Innovating on Hydrological Modelling Calibration Towards a Realistic Simulation of Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources. Earth Syst Environ 9, 901–918 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41748-024-00462-5

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