A Modified SWAT Model to Simulate Soil Water Content and Soil Temperature in Cold Regions: A Case Study of the South Saskatchewan River Basin in Canada

Abstract

Soil water content (SWC) and soil temperature are important hydrologic state variables. Accurate model simulation is critical in hydrologic regimes in cold regions dominated by spring snowmelt. In this study, we developed a combined physically-based soil temperature and energy-balance rain-on-snow (ROS) module for the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model and applied it to the South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB). We calibrated the SWAT base (SWAT-B) model and the SWAT modified (SWAT–M) model using daily measured soil temperature and SWC by hydrological response unit (HRU) for the years 2015 to 2020. The results of sensitivity analysis using the SUFI-2 technique in SWAT-CUP indicated that eight parameters have the most significant (p < 0.5) effect on streamflow, soil moisture, and snowmelt. Statistics for the SWAT-B and SWAT-M streamflow models revealed that the new module improved the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) from 0.39 to 0.71 and 0.42 to 0.76 for calibration and validation, respectively. The statistics for SWAT-simulated daily SWC showed that the measured data were a better fit with SWAT-M versus the SWAT-B output. Furthermore, SWAT-B values exceeded SWAT-M output and field measurements, and thus, the range of SWAT-M results was a better fit with observations. SWAT-B tended to underestimate soil temperature in the cold season, while SWAT-M significantly improved soil temperature simulation for winter. This new SWAT module simulated freeze-thaw cycles and captured the influence of snow cover on surface soil ice-water content. Spatial analysis of SWC and soil temperature across the SSRB showed that the SWAT-M model predicted more SWC and lower soil temperature in the western part of SSRB than SWAT-B, with higher soil temperature and lower SWC in the eastern region.