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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Water
Sec. Water Resource Management
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frwa.2025.1500086
This article is part of the Research Topic Advancement in Hydrological Modeling and Water Resources Management for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) View all 13 articles

Streamflow and Sediment Simulation in the Song River Basin using the SWAT model

Provisionally accepted
Shams Quamar Shams Quamar 1*Pradeep Kumar Pradeep Kumar 2Harendra Prasad Singh Harendra Prasad Singh 3
  • 1 Department of Civil Engineering, Central university of Jharkhand, Ranchi, India
  • 2 National Institute of Hydrology (Roorkee), Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India
  • 3 Department of Civil Engineering, Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi, Jharkhand 835205, India, Ranchi, India

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

    This study assesses the performance of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) in simulating streamflow and sediment for the Song River watershed, with a focus on calibration, validation, and sensitivity analysis. Thirteen parameters were selected for calibration, with eight identified as highly sensitive, reflecting key hydrological processes of the area. The model was calibrated for the period 1974-1995 and validated from 1996-2004, with additional testing using field data collected in 2022-2023 through Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) measurements. Key model adjustments, such as the baseflow recession constant (ALPHA_BF) and channel roughness coefficient (CH_N2), were set to 0.05 and 0.04, respectively, to capture the area's groundwater dynamics and channel characteristics. The calibration results indicated a strong fit, with R² values of 0.77, NSE of 0.70, and PBIAS of 17.06, demonstrating good agreement between observed and simulated streamflow. Validation showed slightly lower but acceptable performance, with R² of 0.75 and NSE of 0.68. Further ADCP validation from field data showed R² values of 0.79 and 0.78 for two monitoring sites, confirming the model's reliability. Sediment yield simulations at site-2 yielded R² values of 0.70 and 0.59 for calibration and validation, with NSE values of 0.53 and 0.52, indicating the model's capability to simulate both streamflow and sediment accurately. These results demonstrate SWAT's practical utility for water resource management in similar datalimited regions.

    Keywords: rainfall-runoff modelling, Streamflow, sediment, SWAT, Calibration, Validation

    Received: 22 Sep 2024; Accepted: 09 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Quamar, Kumar and Singh. 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: Shams Quamar, Department of Civil Engineering, Central university of Jharkhand, Ranchi, India

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