The role of station density forredicting daily runoff by top-kriging interpolation in Austria

Abstract

Direct interpolation of daily runoff observations to ungauged sites is an alternative to hydrological model regionalisation. Such estimation isarticularly important in small headwater basins characterized by sparse hydrological and climate observations, but often large spatial variability. The main objective of this study is to evaluateredictive accuracy of top-kriging interpolation driven by different number of stations (i.e. station densities) in an input dataset. The idea is to interpolate daily runoff for different station densities in Austria and to evaluate the minimum number of stations needed for accurate runoffredictions. Top-kriging efficiency is tested for ten different random samples in ten different stations densities. Theredictive accuracy is evaluated by ordinary cross-validation and full-sample crossvalidations. The methodology is tested by using 555 gauges with daily observations in theeriod 1987-1997. The results of the cross-validation indicate that, in Austria, top-kriging interpolation is superior to hydrological model regionalisation if station density exceeds approximately 2 stationser 1000 km2 (175 stations in Austria). The average median of Nash-Sutcliffe cross-validation efficiency is larger than 0.7 for densities above 2.4 stations/1000 km2. For such densities, the variability of runoff efficiency is very small over ten random samples. Lower runoff efficiency is found for low station densities (less than 1 station/1000 km2) and in some smaller headwater basins.