Watershed Hydrology Simulation Model of Middle Section of Rio Grande River Basin

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT; Arnold et al., 1998) was used in this study to simulate the impacts of climate change, land and water conservation practices, and developing riparian forests on the water budget across the watershed. We used the SWAT 10.2 version in the ARCGIS 10.2 environment. The model has 10 sub-basins and 6661 hydrological response units (HRUs) with similar land use, soil type, and topography (slope). We used the completely calibrated and validated SWAT model of the study area developed by Samimi et al. (2022 & 2023), using a USGS 10 m × 10 m DEM (Digital Elevation Model), Land use information of 2008 (near normal year) to represent the average historical crop pattern (Crop Data Layer, 2008), and Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) soil map. The model was calibrated and validated automatically with SWAT-CUP using the SUFI2 algorithm (Abbaspour, 2015) and manually for monthly streamflow, crop irrigation and ET, and average annual groundwater recharge. The developed model is available and may be provided upon request.