Interpreting results of water yield

Software Support
1

Hello everyone,
I have a question,can the “output\per_pixel\wyield_[Suffix].tif” in the results of water yield be used to explain the spatial distribution of water yield? Because in my results the image is quite different from the actual runoff distribution. This makes me wonder that the model is suitable for river basins with less precipitation and dominated by snow and ice melt.
Thank you very much.

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Hi @XiaoYu -

It is fine to look at wyield.tif to assess the patterns of water yield across the landscape, we just don’t recommend using the individual pixel values.

I would say that the Annual Water Yield model is most appropriate for places that are dominated by rainfall. The model itself doesn’t include any of the dynamics of melting snow and ice, and because it operates at an annual average timescale, you won’t see any seasonality to the water flow that might be associated with the snow and ice melt. We do have a Seasonal Water Yield model that operates at a monthly time scale, but again it’s not really made for places dominated by snow. Here’s a forum post that references a paper that might be useful about snow and the SWY model (key takeaway: SWY doesn’t perform well in areas dominated by snow, and the authors used a separate model for snow melt).

That said, did you include snow and ice melt as part of the annual average precipitation raster you used as input? That would be one way to at least make sure that the source of additional water is included in the model.

~ Stacie

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Thank you very much,Swolny!
Can the hydration of snow and precipitation be combined into the model? Is it technically possible?
Thanks again.

4

Hi @XiaoYu -

I have not done this myself, but my understanding is that you would convert the amount of snow that melts to a snow water equivalent (SNE), and add the SNE map to the precipitation map. If anyone else has experience doing this, please let us know!

~ Stacie

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Thanks for your answer!
I’ll give this a try and discuss with you if there are results.
Wish you a happy life!

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