HESS Hydrology and Earth System Sciences HESS Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 1607-7938 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/hess-13-865-2009 A generic system dynamics model for simulating and evaluating the hydrological performance of reconstructed watersheds Keshta N. 1 Elshorbagy A. 1 Carey S. 2 Centre for Advanced Numerical Simulation (CANSIM), Dept. of Civil and Geological Engineering, University of <br>Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A9, Canada Dept. Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada 22 06 2009 13 6 865 881 Copyright: © 2009 N. Keshta et al. 2009 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/13/865/2009/hess-13-865-2009.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/13/865/2009/hess-13-865-2009.pdf

A generic system dynamics watershed (GSDW) model is developed and applied to five reconstructed watersheds located in the Athabasca mining basin, Alberta, Canada, and one natural watershed (boreal forest) located in Saskatchewan, Canada, to simulate various hydrological processes in reconstructed and natural watersheds. This paper uses the root mean square error (RMSE), the mean absolute relative error (MARE), and the correlation coefficient (<i>R</i>) as the main performance indicators, in addition to the visual comparison. For the South Bison Hills (SBH), South West Sand Storage (SWSS) and Old Aspen (OA) simulated soil moisture, the RMSE values ranges between 2.5–4.8 mm, and the MARE ranges from 7% to 18%, except for the D2-cover it was 26% for the validation year. The <i>R</i> statistics ranges from 0.3 to 0.77 during the validation period. The error between the measured and simulated cumulative actual evapotranspiration (AET) flux for the SWSS, SBH, and the OA sites were 2%, 5%, and 8%, respectively. The developed GSDW model enables the investigation of the utility of different soil cover designs and evaluation of their performance. The model is capable of capturing the dynamics of water balance components, and may used to conduct short- and long- term predictions under different climate scenarios.

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