Assessment of Saturated Hydraulic Conductivity-Depth Relationships and Extended Soil Column Thickness in Catchment Hydrological Modelling

Abstract

An appropriate soil configuration is essential in hydrological models given the role of subsurface processes in the hydrological functioning of a catchment. Hydrological models are typically set up with shallow soil depths as restricted by measurements and soil datasets that are often unavailable in greater depths. While this may be sufficient for some catchments, in some areas the water table is located deeper and thus the shallow groundwater and its link with the rest of the hydrological processes may not be captured well by the model. An important soil parameter, that is known to vary with soil depth, is the saturated hydraulic conductivity (K_sat). In this study, we assessed different vertical profiles of K_sat which exceed the typical soil measurement depths. The K_sat profiles were implemented in wflow.jl for the distributed hydrological model wflow_sbm and tested for the Vecht catchment. Results demonstrated that increasing the soil thickness and implementing any of the K_sat profiles assessed improved the discharge and mean groundwater depth predictive capabilities, albeit altering the groundwater dynamics. A sensitivity analysis revealed the respective influence of four model parameters on the groundwater dynamics which can be used as basis to optimise the model performance further.