Assessing runoff sensitivity of North American Prairie Pothole Region basins to wetland drainage using a basin classification-based virtual modelling approach

Spence, Christopher; He, Zhihua; Shook, Kevin R.; Pomeroy, John W.; Whitfield, Colin J.; Wolfe, Jared D.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5555-2022

Articles | Volume 26, issue 21

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5555-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5555-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 26, issue 21

Research article

|

08 Nov 2022

Research article |

| 08 Nov 2022

Assessing runoff sensitivity of North American Prairie Pothole Region basins to wetland drainage using a basin classification-based virtual modelling approach

Christopher Spence, Zhihua He, Kevin R. Shook, John W. Pomeroy, Colin J. Whitfield, and Jared D. Wolfe

Data sets

Virtual Watershed Model Simulations for Typified Prairie Watersheds in Pothole Till Z. He, K. Shook, C. Spence, J. W. Pomeroy, C. J. Whitfield, and J. D. Wolfe https://doi.org/10.20383/103.0650

Short summary

We learnt how streamflow from small creeks could be altered by wetland removal in the Canadian Prairies, where this practice is pervasive. Every creek basin in the region was placed into one of seven groups. We selected one of these groups and used its traits to simulate streamflow. The model worked well enough so that we could trust the results even if we removed the wetlands. Wetland removal did not change low flow amounts very much, but it doubled high flow and tripled average flow.