Integrated Modeling System for Water Resources Management of Tarim River Basin.

An integrated modeling system has been developed for water resources management of the Tarim River Basin, China. The system coupled remote sensing (RS)/geography information system (GIS) technique with distributed hydrological model to simulate the rainfall runoff, snow melting, and evapotranspiration process of the hydrological cycle. A case study was carried out in the Kaidu watershed. RS/GIS technique was used for effectively accessing, processing, and managing spatial data, such as land use, vegetative cover, soil, topography, precipitation, and evapotranspiration. The model was calibrated and validated against observed discharge for two hydrological stations during the period 1998–2001, and it generally performed well for Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient, water balance coefficient, and correlation coefficient. The Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient was approximately over 0.7 and the water balance error was lower than ± 5%, indicating reasonable prediction accuracy. A comparison between the conventional and RS-based hydrological models was conducted. Although the two models exhibit similar performances on runoff and snow melt simulation, the RS-based hydrological model had better performance in the simulation of actual evapotranspiration. Modeling results provide useful decision support for water resources management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]