IRJET- Hydrological Modeling of Penganga Sub-Basin using Arc-SWAT

International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 06 Issue: 04 | Apr 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
© 2019, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.211 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 1807
Hydrological Modeling of Penganga Sub-Basin using ArcSWAT
Prof. Dipali P Patil1, Mr. Sachin M Bhere1, Ms. Yashashri Kharade2, Ms. Nikita Gengaje2,
Ms. Rutuja Mhatre2
1Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Dilkap Research Institute of Engineering and
Management Studies.
2Student, Department of Civil Engineering, Dilkap Research Institute of Engineering and Management Studies.
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Abstract - The management of water in India faces significant challenges in both the level i.e. quality and quantity. In order
to address these challenges and to source the rational and efficient management of water resources, it is necessary to
understand the different issues involved in the water cycle works. Thus hydrological models are important tools that have
been used in water resource planning and its management in this study the hydrology of Penganga sub-basin which flows
along the south east boundaries of the district is modelled, using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). Its capacity is
0.951000 cu.km. It aims to simulate the stream flow, establish the water balance and estimate the monthly volume inflow to
Penganga river in order to help the managers to handle and plan this important reservoir. This study uses total 10 years of
data from year 2003 to 2013. The study focuses on the creation, organization and generation of input data. Input data like
soil condition, climatic condition etc. is been search using a Geographic Information System i.e. ( ArcGIS) then the
configuration of the data is to be done. Thereafter the basin delineation and Hydrological Response Unit (HRU) definition is
did using Arc SWAT. Once the HRU is defined the SWAT stimulation is done. After that the calibration and validation of the
models is done for evaluating the stimulated outflow. Evaluation of the results shows that the results are satisfying; they show
that this model can represent the overall hydrological regime of the Penganga sub-basin. The calibrated model can be used
for further utilize for future water resource management of the Penganga sub-basin.
Key Words: Hydrological model, Arc-SWAT, HRU definition, Penganga sub-basin, Water resource management.
1. INTRODUCTION
Water is the prime necessity for all forms of life. Human civilization has progressed from early era with utilisation of
available water resources. Hydrology is the science which deals with the occurrence, distribution and movement of water
on the earth including that in the atmosphere and under the atmosphere and under the surface of the earth. Many zones
face the scarcity of freshwater or subject to pollution. Thus, the sustainable use and the availability of the water resources
becomes the core of the local and national strategies and politics in this regions. Hydrologic cycle is the process of transfer
of moisture from the atmosphere to the earth in the form of precipitation, conveyance of the precipitated water by streams
and rivers to ocean and lakes and back to the atmosphere in the form of evaporation. (Dr. B.C.Punmia, 1994 Irrigation and
Water Power Engineering). Other major global concerns regarding food security, human health, economic development,
climate change and regional conflicts are not exclusively but to a considerable extent related to the freshwater availability.
Surface water hydrology deals with movement of water along the watershed as a result of precipitation of surface water
flow. The water cycle is the movement of water between the ice, the ocean, the atmosphere and fresh water. It consists of
several processes such as precipitation, evaporation, transpiration, infiltration, runoff, interflow and routing.
Precipitation is the fall of moisture from the atmosphere to the earth surface in any form. It is of two forms liquid
precipitation and frozen precipitation with consist of rainfall, snow, sleet, hail etc. A hydrological model is fed with
precipitation grids at regular intervals throughout the length of the stimulation. Some precipitation is intercepted by
plants a portion infiltrates the ground and the residue flows off into lakes, rivers and oceans. The water in an aquifer is
called ground water, and its rate of flow in the subsurface is such a way that water can reside in aquifers for days to
centuries before discharging to a surface body of water. Evaporation and evapotranspiration are the two most important
phases of hydrological cycle which return the energy between surface and atmosphere. Evapotranspiration is thus a
compound term that gives the collective effect of evaporation of water and transpiration of plants. Infiltration is the
downward movement of water from soil surface into the soil mass through the pores of the soil. The soil moisture
deficiency in excess water infiltrates downwards to join ground water. The process in which water is lost through the
living plants, during the respiration process and back to atmosphere is known as transpiration.
The runoff is used for water that is in a flowing state, in contrast to the water held in depression storage and water in the
atmosphere which is evaporated. The runoff is generally thought of as the movement of excess rainfall across the land
surface into lakes, oceans and rivers. Runoff is a particularly an important process at the catchment scale, since it can

recharge reservoirs that may subsequently recharge draining into a reservoir in that period. It occurs when the rate of
precipitation exceeds the rate of infiltration at the soil surface or when soil is saturated. The runoff rises significantly as
the vegetation cover falls below 30% the bars of the soil produce a large runoff coefficient. Groundwater is the water that
occurs below the surface of Earth, where it occupies all the part of the void spaces in soil or geologic strata. Natural
groundwater fluxes are
Typically slow; water may reside in an aquifer for few hours or for hundred of years. The groundwater is also called as
subsurface water to distinguish it from surface water, which is found in large bodies like the oceans and lakes which flows
overland in streams. Most groundwater comes from precipitation. Precipitation infiltrates below the ground surface into
the soil zone. Groundwater continues to descend until, at some depth, it merges into the zone of dense rock. The process of
precipitation replenishing the groundwater supply is known as recharge. Natural outflows of the groundwater take place
through the springs and the riverbeds when the pressure of groundwater is higher than that of the atmospheric pressure
in the vicinity of the ground surface.
At the catchment scale, however, where the streams aquifer interactions are relatively the rapid and substantial, the
average groundwater fluxes are relatively fast moving. Modelling methods have been widely used for over 40 years for a
variety of purposes, but almost all the modelling tools have been primarily developed for humid area applications. The
arid and the semiarid areas have been particular challenges that have received little attention. The development of models
has gone hand-in-hand with the developments in computing the power. While the models originated in 1930s and could
be used with the hand calculation, the first hydrological models for the continuous simulation of rainfall-runoff processes
emerged in the 1960s, when the computing power was sufficient to represent the land-phase processes in a simplified
way. The relationship between models and data is fundamental to the modelling task. Now-a-days, the study of the
watershed’s water resources requires use of the methods and the technologies that make it possible to combine the
several elements, namely the watershed topography, climate change, nature of the soil and impact of human beings on the
hydrological balance through the use of soil (ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences).
SWAT has been adjudged by researches as computationally efficient in its prediction. It has a reliability which confirmed in
several areas around the world (Alexandria Engineering Journal). SWAT model was applied in large scale to evaluate the
hydrological processes in Penganga river. The models have a parameter, which are numerical measures of a property or
characteristics that are constant under the specified conditions. The application of a model like SWAT requires a large
number of spatial and temporal data of different types and sources, collection and use of these data makes the use of
SWAT difficult (APRN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences). A lumped model is the one in which the parameters,
inputs, and outputs are spatially averaged and take a single value for the entire catchment. The tasks for which the rainfall-
runoff models are used are diverse, and the scale of applications ranges from the small catchments, of the order of a few
hectares, to that of the global models. However the modelling approach adopted will, in general, depend on the required
scale of the problem, the type of catchment, and the modelling task.
2. Materials and Methods
The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a continuous, long term, physical based conceptual model. This model
operates at basin scale on daily time step (Arnold et al., 1998, 2000; Neitsh et al., 2001 ). Soil and Water Assessment Tool
(SWAT) is applied to model the hydrology of Penganga sub-basin. The methodologies used in this study include a
description of the study area, hydrological model and the spatial dataset which is used in the simulation (S. M Ghoraba)
2.1 Description of the study area
Penganga River is a major tributary of Wardha river and it rises in the Ajantha range. The Penganga River is the chief river
of the Buldhana district, Hingoli district, Nanded district, Yavatmal district, Chandrapur district, Washim district in the
Maharashtra state in India flows along the South East boundaries of the district. The total length of the river is 676km (420
mi). It lies between 20.375422 North latitudes and 76.332892 East longitude (decimal degrees). The district has an area of
13582 sq.km. (4.41 percent of the state) and a population of 2077144 (2.63 percent of the State). The density of
population is 153 persons per km2 which is less than 257 persons per km2 for the state as whole. The central portion is a
plateau with very steep sides and attains an elevation of between 300 and 600 metres above the mean sea level. This
valley varies between 65-80 kilometers in width. The small part of it that belongs to Yavatmal district forms a belt of plain
from 8 to 22 km in width along the northern district boundary. The average monthly precipitation is about 114.6458mm,
most of which occurs during July-October. The average volume inflow from Penganga sub-basin is estimated at 275.0873
mm³/month, from 2003 to 2013 according to a gauged point on the location.

Figure 1: Location Map of Penganga sub-basin
2.2 Description of SWAT model
The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a continuous, long term, physical based conceptual model. This model
operates at basin scale on daily time step (Arnold et al., 1998, 2000; Neitsh et al., 2001). It uses a command structure for
routing runoff and chemical through watershed. It is developed by Agricultural Research Services of United States
Department of Agriculture to predict the impact of land management practices on water, sediment, and agriculture
chemical yields in large and complex watersheds with varying soils, land use, and management conditions over long
periods of time, (S.M. Ghoraba). It is a hydrologic model with Arc-map GIS interface which has been developed by the
USDA-ARS and the Black land Research and Extension Centre (Arnold et al., 1998). SWAT was developed from an earlier
continuous time step model named Simulator for Water Resources in Rural Basins (SWRRB) (Williams et al., 1985, Arnold
et al., 1990) which simulated non-point source loading from watershed. In the SWAT model, the catchment is primarily
divided into sub-basins or sub-watersheds based on topographic criteria followed by further division into series of HRUs
i.e. Hydrological Response Units on the basis of unique soil, slope and land use combination. Simulations can be carried out
for components of hydrological cycles, nutrient cycles and sediment yield and then aggregated for the sub-basins. The
SWAT model provides the users with various options when simulation is conducted for the hydrological processes, which
can be selected based on the data availability.
Generally water enters in the form of precipitation into the SWAT watershed system. In the model flow routing and water
quality parameters is carried out on the basis of HRU to each sub-basin and eventually to the outlet of watershed. Arc-
SWAT (Arc GIS-SWAT) is the latest available version which is used as an interface between ArcGIS and the SWAT model.
Arc-SWAT version 2.3.4 which was built for Arc-Map 10.2 is used in this study. Spatial data (DEM, soil and land use ) are
used in the pre- processing phase and fed into the SWAT model through the interface. The land cover and soil make
important responding units and the same is accomplished by SWAT model by subdividing the watershed into the areas
having unique land use soil combination which is called as the Hydrological Response Units (HRU) during the process of
the runoff generation. SWAT requires assortment of input data layers for the model setup and watershed simulations. The
topography of the watershed is defined by a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) which is used to calculate the sub-basin
parameters such as slope and to define the stream network. The soil data is required to define the soil characteristics and
attributes. The land use and land cover data provide the vegetation information on ground and their ecological processes
in lands and soils. Climate, precipitation and stream flow data are sourced and prepared according to the SWAT input
requirements.
The hydrologic cycle of the SWAT model is based on the water balance equation, which considers the unsaturated zone
and the shallow aquifer above the impermeable layer as a unit.
Eq. (1) is the important equation to predict the watershed of the hydrology used by SWAT.
Where it is the time in days, SWt and SWo are the final and initial soil water content respectively (mm), R_day is amount of
precipitation on day i (mm), Qsurf is the amount of surface runoff on day i (mm) , Qgw is the amount of return flow on day
i (mm).
(1)

The estimation of surface runoff can be performed bye the model using the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) curve number
method, (S.M.Ghoraba) This method is widely used for the prediction of approximate amount of runoff from a given
rainfall event.
The SCS curve number equation is
(2)
Where it is the daily surface runoff (mm),Rday is the rainfall depth for the day (mm), and S is the retention parameter
(mm). The retention parameter S and the prediction of lateral flow by SWAT model are define in Eq.
Where CN1 is the moisture condition I curve number, CN2 is the moisture condition II curve number, and CN3 is the
moisture condition III curve number.
Lateral flow is predicted by
Where = lateral flow (mm/day); s=drainable volume of soil Water per unit area of saturated thickness (mm/day); SC
= saturated hydraulic conductivity (mm/h) ; L =flow length(m), = slope of the land,
2.3 Digital Elevation Model (DEM)
The SRTM DEM of 30 m resolution (Bhuvan nrsc) was processed for the extraction of flow direction, flow accumulation,
stream network generation and delineation of the watershed and sub-basins, The topographic parameters such as terrain
slope, channel slope or reach length were derived from the DEM.
Figure 2: Digital Elevation Model (DEM)
2.4 Land Use Land Cover
Change in land use and vegetation affect the water cycle and its influence is a function of the density of plant cover and
morphology of plant species.

Figure 3: Land use Land cover Map
The land-use/ land-cover data is obtained from Decadal Map and used in this study. Thirteen classes are identified which
contains Water: 1.08%, Wetlands-mixed: 0.01%, South Western us (arid) Range: 0.38%, Range-Brush: 10.25%,
Agricultural Land-Generic: 0.81%. The land-use classes are converted into SWAT classes and are defined using lookup
tables.
2.5 Soil Data
The soil map, was obtained mainly from FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization). The soils are compared with the
watershed area to use their properties to define HRUs. Five soils are delineated in the catchment such as Shallow coarse
soil: 8.60%, Medium black soil: 5.65%, Deep black soil: 2.87%, Clayey medium black soil: 7.06%, Clayey Lumi: 74.90%.
Figure 4: Soil Map
2.6 Meteorological data
The meteorological data was obtained from Global Map from the year 2003-2013. The precipitation in 2003 was
101.28mm and in 2013 it was 39.41mm. SWAT automatically read the data from 3 rain gauge stations which includes
rainfall, temperature, relative humidity etc. This region was flooded in 2013.

2.7 Model simulation
Hydrologic modelling of Penganga sub-basin was carried out using the Arc-SWAT version 10.2. After preparing the data
files and completing all the model inputs, the model is ready for simulation. The simulation is done for the period of 10
years from 2003-2013 which is the same period of availability of climate data. The model is simulated many times by
changing the evapotranspiration calculation method and the value of hydrological parameters that ranked by the model to
get best match between the model output and observed flow data.
2.8 Model Efficiency
There are many methods to assess and evaluate the accuracy of results produced by the model. The validation were
carried out using Coefficient of Determination (R²) (S.M.Ghoraba).
2.9 coefficient of Determination (R2)
It is the good method to signify the consistency among observed and simulated data by following best fit line. It ranges
from 0 to 1.0 with higher values indicating less error variance, and the values greater than 0.5 are acceptable.
(S.M.Ghoraba).
3. Results and Discussion
Model validation is indispensable for simulation process, which are used to assess Model prediction results. The details,
discussions and model evaluation are given as follows
3.1Model validation
Physically based distributed watershed model should be validation before they are made use in the simulation of
hydrological processes. This is to reduce the uncertainty associated with the model prediction. Validation was performed
by comparing the simulated and observed surface runoff. After achieving a reasonable runoff data, the same value of
validation. The available measurements were used for comparison with the predicted result in order to test the SWAT
simulation efficiency. Validation took place in yearly where outflow data are existed form 2003 to 2013.
For validation, the result of flow shows a good correlation of observed and model simulation as represented in fig
Figure 5: Comparison of monthly observed and simulated stream flow
The average annual flow for the simulation is m³/s whereas the observed flow during the same period is about m³/s
which show very close similarity. The results suggest that the model can, very well, be used to predict the average annual
values of river flow. The statistic evaluators showed a good correlation between the annually observed and simulated
river discharge as follows.
The values of Coefficient of Determination (R²) for the validation recognize the accuracy of the results as shown in fig. 4.
The value of R² test is 0.9082 for validation. It indicate that the model results produced for the flow are very good.

Figure 6: Comparison of simulated and observed Discharge
The fig. 6 shows relation between observed and simulated data which coincide each other. Discharge increases from June
to September and decreases from January to May.
Figure 7: Average Monthly Evapotranspiration from 2003-2013
The fig.7 shows average monthly evapotranspiration from 2003-2013. The rate of evapotranspiration is reducing by 0.01
cm/year.
Figure 8: Average Monthly Sedimentation from 2003-2013
The fig. 8 shows average monthly sedimentation from 2003-2013. The rate of sedimentation increases as the rate of
evapotranspiration decreases.
4 Conclusions
The Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote sensing has a vital role in hydrological modelling of watershed
basin and it helps in studying of basin storage. The SWAT-2012 model is used to validate in the Penganga sub-basin for
quantifying the impact on hydrological basin. The sensitivity analysis of the model to sub-basin delineation and HRU
definition showed that the flow is more sensitive to the HRU definition than the sub-basin discretization effect. The
hydrological basin storage analysis showed that discharge is an important component for quantifying the basin storage of
reservoir.
The Conclusion obtained for the hydrological simulation of Penganga sub-basin are:

SWAT is useful to demonstrate hydrological model by 0.9082 coefficient of correlation (R²) in Penganga river.
Over Penganga river the rate of
evapotranspiration is reducing by 0.01cm/year.
In results, we observed the rate of sedimentation is increases as the rate of evapotranspiration decreases.
So, the soil erosion is increased as the same rate of sedimentation due to large deforestation over Penganga
river or climatic changes.
The result can help water commission of India in future for the development of the basin area with respect to water
storage in reservoir due to sediment, water demand, and water supply. Thus we can conclude that hydrological modelling
and sediment analysis of Penganga sub-basin is significant.
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IRJET- Hydrological Modeling of Penganga Sub-Basin using Arc-SWAT

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