Calibration and validation of SWAT Model in runoff simulation, case study: Neka Watershed

SWAT is a continuous, physically based and distributed hydrologic model which all several hydrological processes like discharge, sediment yield nitrogen are simulated for each one of it. The purpose of this study is to test the efficiency of the Soil and Water Assessment Test (SWAT) and its applicability as a flow simulator, and using SWAT-Cup software and the SUFI2 algorithm as a means to calibrate and validate Neka Watershed in Mazandaran Province. Four indices were used to assess the goodness of calibration, viz., P-factor, R-factor, R2 and Nash-Sutcliffe (NS). Runoff data (1995-2004) of four hydrometery stations were used for calibration and (2005-2009) for validation of this watershed. The results of these values for flows at four stations for calibration process in Ablo, Pain zarandin, Karkhane siman and Sefid chah were 0.85, 0.78, 0.78, 0.89 for P-factor; 2.55, 2.03, 1.71, 2.43 for R-factor; 0.76, 0.62, 0.69, 0.71 for Nash-Sutcliffe and 0.71, 0.82, 0.76, 0.63 for R2. The results of validation were 0.87, 0.88, 0.72, 0.72 for P-factor; 3.61, 2.24, 3.56, 1.78 for R-factor; 0.74, 0.66, 0.58, 0.64 for Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) and 0.81, 0.68, 0.73, 0.61 for R2 respectively. In general, the results showed that SWAT could be a proper tool for simulating the flow rate values of the Neka Watershed.