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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Water
Sec. Water Resource Management
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frwa.2024.1451648

Large Wetlands Representation in SWAT+: the case of the Pantanal in the Paraguay River Basin

Provisionally accepted
Osvaldo Luis Barresi Armoa Osvaldo Luis Barresi Armoa 1,2,3,4*Jeffrey Arnold Jeffrey Arnold 5Katrin Bieger Katrin Bieger 6Sabine Sauvage Sabine Sauvage 2,3,7José Miguel SANCHEZ PEREZ José Miguel SANCHEZ PEREZ 2,3,4*
  • 1 Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France
  • 2 Other, Toulouse, France
  • 3 Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, Toulouse, Occitanie, France
  • 4 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Toulouse, France
  • 5 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Washington, District of Columbia, United States
  • 6 Department of Ecoscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
  • 7 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Toulouse, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The Paraguay River Basin forms part of the La Plata River Basin in South America. Its streamflow is significantly attenuated by a high evapotranspiration rate, very gentle slopes and the presence of a vast wetland known as the Pantanal. Modeling the hydrology of watersheds in which the flood pulse is affected by the presence of large floodplains can pose issues for hydrological models that do not account for spatial complexity and simplify water routing using linear assumptions. The new version of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool, known as SWAT+, routes water using variations of the kinematic wave model. However, with the inclusion of connectivity and Landscape Units, SWAT+ provides more flexibility in terms of representing the hydrologic fluxes in the watershed.The main objective of this study is to use the concept of Landscape Units and connectivity to represent the water exchanges between uplands, floodplains and channels. We developed code routines to (1) temporally retain surface and subsurface water coming from the uplands into the floodplain, by assuming a reservoir-like floodplain behavior, and ( 2) represent overbank flow, aiming to fully simulate the interactions between channels and floodplains. The model was calibrated based on monthly discharge for the period 1990 to 2020. The simulated average annual water storage in the floodplains of the Paraguay River is approximately 108.81 mm accounting for 56.5% of the total annual discharge at the outlet. Furthermore, approximately 61% of the total annual surface runoff in the Paraguay River Basin flows through the floodplains. Results indicate that the model is able to capture the hydrologic regime in the Paraguay River representing an improvement of SWAT+.

    Keywords: SWAT+, Floodplain, Water routing, Paraguay River, Pantanal, Flood wave, Landscape units, connectivity

    Received: 19 Jun 2024; Accepted: 04 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Barresi Armoa, Arnold, Bieger, Sauvage and SANCHEZ PEREZ. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Osvaldo Luis Barresi Armoa, Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France
    José Miguel SANCHEZ PEREZ, Other, Toulouse, France

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