Impact of local versus global datasets on hydrological responses in Mahanadi River basin in India

ABSTRACT Global environmental changes are likely to have a large impact on water resources across the developing countries. However, most of these countries suffer from acute shortage of local data. New high-resolution global products are available, which can be integrated with large-scale hydrological models. Most of these global products, however, are rarely evaluated in developing regions. We propose a thorough evaluation of five new global products in Mahanadi River basin in India. We employ the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model over the basin and perform model experiments to directly evaluate the impacts of the specific combinations of local and global datasets. Results suggest that the reference experiment, which uses all local datasets, most closely represents the observed discharge. However, some of the global datasets could be used as a viable alternative to local observations in this river basin and potentially in nearby basins where there is a lack of observations.