Explicit representation and calibration of different landscape units for a robust catchment DOC export model

Nguyen, Tam V.; Kumar, Rohini; Ledesma, José L. J.; Ebeling, Pia; Fleckenstein, Jan H.; Musolff, Andreas

doi:10.5194/hess-30-5749-2026

Articles | Volume 30, issue 17

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-5749-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-5749-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 30, issue 17

Research article

|

11 Sep 2026

Research article |

| 11 Sep 2026

Explicit representation and calibration of different landscape units for a robust catchment DOC export model

Tam V. Nguyen, Rohini Kumar, José L. J. Ledesma, Pia Ebeling, Jan H. Fleckenstein, and Andreas Musolff

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-5749-2026-supplement

Data sets

CORINE Land Cover 2018 (raster 100 m), Europe, 6-yearly - version 2020_20u1, May 2020 EEA https://doi.org/10.2909/960998c1-1870-4e82-8051-6485205ebbac

Model code and software

mQM-DOC: muti-scale water Quality Model for Dissolved Organic Carbon T. V. Nguyen et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22273576

mhm-ufz/mHM: v5.13.1 Samaniego et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8279545

Short summary

Lumped and landscape-explicit dissolved organic carbon (DOC) models are commonly calibrated using stream DOC concentrations, while internal DOC dynamics in different model compartments are not given enough attention. Our study shows that stream DOC alone is insufficient to constrain internal DOC dynamics. Applying models calibrated in this way under changing boundary conditions may therefore lead to unrealistic results.