Modeling Fields of River Runoff (A Case Study for the Lena River Basin)

Yu. G. Motovilov

The potential of the model approach to the construction of mean annual fields (maps) of specific runoff for large territories from meteorological data is demonstrated for the Lena River basin. The ECOMAG (ECOlogical Model for Applied Geophysics), the physically based distributed model of river runoff formation is used to simulate hydrological parameters. Methodological aspects of calibration of the spatial fields of model parameters are discussed. The results of runoff hydrograph calculations are compared with the data of hydrometric observations at 12 gaging stations for the period of 1966–2009. The field of mean annual specific runoff in the Lena River basin computed with the ECOMAG model is compared with the map of specific runoff constructed from the data on water discharge in the river network. The comparative analysis of consistency between the fields is provided, and the possible sources of errors are considered.