Continental‐Scale River Flow Modeling of the Mississippi River Basin Using High‐Resolution NHD Plus Dataset

• Published in: Journal of the American Water Resources Association 2017-04, Vol.53 (2), p.258-279
• Main Authors: Tavakoly, Ahmad A., Snow, Alan D., David, Cédric H., Follum, Michael L., Maidment, David R., Yang, Zong‐Liang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1093-474X; 1752-1688
• DOI: 10.1111/1752-1688.12456

As a key component of the National Flood Interoperability Experiment ( NFIE ), this article presents the continental scale river flow modeling of the Mississippi River Basin ( MRB ), using high‐resolution river data from NHD Plus . The Routing Application for Parallel computatIon of Discharge ( RAPID ) was applied to the MRB with more than 1.2 million river reaches for a 10‐year study (2005‐2014). Runoff data from the Variable Infiltration Capacity ( VIC ) model was used as input to RAPID . This article investigates the effect of topography on RAPID performance, the differences between the VIC ‐ RAPID streamflow simulations in the HUC ‐2 regions of the MRB , and the impact of major dams on the streamflow simulations. The model performance improved when initial parameter values, especially the Muskingum K parameter, were estimated by taking topography into account. The statistical summary indicates the RAPID model performs better in the Ohio and Tennessee Regions and the Upper and Lower Mississippi River Regions in comparison to the western part of the MRB , due to the better performance of the VIC model. The model accuracy also increases when lakes and reservoirs are considered in the modeling framework. In general, results show the VIC ‐ RAPID streamflow simulation is satisfactory at the continental scale of the MRB .