Hydrologic modeling of principal sub-basins of the magdalena-cauca large basin using wflow model.

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Wendy Ramirez Morales, Jorge Sanchez Lozano, Felipe Ardila, Cesar Cardona Almeida, Cesar Garay Bohorquez, Jose Oliveros Acosta, Erasmo A Rodriguez Sandoval

Thursday 2 july 2015

17:30 - 17:33h at Central America (level 0)

Themes: (T) Water resources and hydro informatics (WRHI), (ST) Catchment hydrology, Poster pitches

Parallel session: Poster pitches: 13H. WRHI - Catchment

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In Colombia, the Magdalena River is the principal waterway of the country. Its basin corresponds to 24% of the Colombian territory (257.440 km2) and 77% of the population is settled there. The hydrological modeling is seeking an alternative to determine the contributions, in terms of flow discharges, each sub-basin provides to the Magdalena River, so that they can be used as a complement to the entries in the hydraulic analysis. In this case the strategy used is the regional modelling to achieve the simulation of the 30 tributaries flow without information. The hydrologic model used was the wflow model for the period between 2008 and 2012. In general the performance of the wflow model was good in the temporality representation of the hydrographs in relation with the observed flows, that is to say, the low flows are simulated in low rainy seasons and high flows are simulated in high rainy seasons, nevertheless the peak flows aren’t simulated. Different tests proved that the model generate all possible runoff that it can be, with the climatic conditions given, so the principal source of uncertainty comes from input information, the precipitation interpolation attenuates the big storms and limited the simulation consequent discharges. In conclusion, it was obtained a hydrological model for all Magdalena-Cauca Basin, which allows to know its tributaries flow, especially those that produced high water levels in the Magdalena River. It is possible to suppose than enough climatological information will allow representing better intense precipitations spatially. Although the climatological monitoring network in Colombia has been growing with years, it is evident the need for greater information density in order to improve the large scale modeling capacity. The wflow model result an efficient tool to hydrography representation of the Magdalena-Cauca Basin, accurately capturing the temporarily of processes in the basin, giving a good estimate of flows particularly on the mainstream of the Magdalena River.