Modelling hydrologic processes of a karst region in Southern China using coupled hydrological models

ABSTRACT

In the karst area, the epikarst increases the infiltration of rainfall and the depressions and conduits make water exchange frequently between surface rivers and karst aquifers. To improve simulation accuracy, we proposed the Soil and Water Assessment Tool-Genetic Algorithm-Back Propagation (SWAT-GA-BP) model. Also, the SWAT-tank model was created to elaborate the runoff processes in different karst systems. Furthermore, we designed three scenarios to study the influence of land use changes on runoff. The Zuo River Basin was selected as a case study. Compared to SWAT, the determination coefficient of the SWAT-GA-BP increased by 4.8% and the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency increased by 4.9%; the rapid flow accounted for more than 50% of the total runoff, and the slow flow for less than 10%; the contribution of the land use changes was 10.80% from 2008 to 2012 and 5.57% from 2013 to 2017. Therefore, the effect of land use change on runoff should not be ignored.

KEYWORDS:

• karst area in South China
• SWAT-GA-BP model
• SWAT-tank model
• land use change

Editor A. Fiori; Associate Editor G. Jeelani

Editor A. Fiori; Associate Editor G. Jeelani

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the insightful comments and suggestions from the editors and anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authorship contribution statement

Yufeng Wang and Zhe Yang contributed equally to this work.

YF Wang: methodology, visualization, writing – original draft, funding acquisition. Z Yang: conceptualization, formal analysis, writing – review and editing, funding acquisition. LJ Zhao: Principal Investigator, validation, investigation. SB Song: validation, writing – review and editing. Y Li: writing – review and editing. JL Shao: methodology, writing – review and editing, data curation.

Consent to publish

The authors declare that they consent with the publication of this paper.

Data availability statement

Data are available after request from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi [Grant No. 2023-JC-QN-0572]; Chinese Universities Scientific Fund [Grant No. 2452021086, 2452021085]; the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 52109034]; the Cyrus Tang Foundation [Grant No. K4050723175]; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [Grant No. 2023M732891]; Shaanxi Postdoctoral Science Foundation [Grant No. 2023BSHYDZZ64]; State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University [Grant No. SKHL2112].