A deterministic distributed modeling approach of Mediterranean water-cycle assessment, application in the Var catchment, France

Abstract

Characterized by special morphologic, geographic, hydrologic, and societal behaviors, the water resources management of the Mediterranean catchment often shows a higher level of complexity including security issues of water supply, inundation risks, and environment management under the perspective of climate change. To have a comprehensive understanding of the Mediterranean water-cycle system, a deterministic distributed hydrologic modeling approach has been developed and presented in this study based on an application in the Var catchment (2800 km2) located at the French Mediterranean region. A 1D and 2D coupled model of MIKE SHE and MIKE 11 has been set up under a series of hypotheses to represent the whole hydrologic and hydrodynamic processes including rainfall-runoff, snow-melting, channel flow, overland flow, and the water exchange between land surface and unsaturated/saturated zones. The developed model was first calibrated with 4 years daily records from 2008 to 2011, then to be validated and further run within hourly time interval to produce detailed representation of the catchment water-cycle from 2012 to 2014. The deterministic distributed modeling approach presented in this study is able to represent its complicated water-cycle and used for supporting the decision-making process of the water resources management of the catchment.