Calibrating and Validating the Soil Water Assessment tool on the NaiBaran Catchment

Abstract

Climate change is a major concern for water resource managers and planners. Water resources are under tremendous pressure affecting every aspect of life, especially hydrological cycles are vigorously affected. This research study focuses on calibrating and validating the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) on the NaiBaran Catchment. To calibrate and validate the model, meteorological data, land-use, digital elevation model, soil features, and observed flow data were used. For simulating the surface runoff from 2016 to 2019, the SWAT model was used while SWAT-CUP (Calibration and Uncertainty Program) was employed to calibrate and validate the model. The model performance was evaluated through statistical indices such as Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency co-efficient (NSE) and correlation coefficient (R2); the results of these both indices were NSE 0.80; 0.92 and R20.81; 0.93 in calibrating and validating processes respectively. The results of these statistical indices showed that the SWAT model was successfully calibrated and validated on the NaiBaran catchment.