STREAMFLOW ESTIMATION IN UNGAUGED WATERSHEDS BY THE CEQUEAU HYDROLOGICAL MODEL

Abstract

Water is a fundamental natural resource for life on Earth and is the basic component of the hydrological cycle. The evaluation of the amount of available water in a watershed is a requirement for development; and administration of the hydric resources whether it is for supplying water to the population, agriculture, industry or for energy production. Hydrological modeling is one of the principal tools used for estimating flows in ungauged watersheds. In this study the CEQUEAU distributed hydrological model was applied to estimate the flows in four ungauged sites of the Tacotalpa river watershed for the period 1965 to 1999. For the evaluation of the efficiency of the model, three statistics were used: the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NSE), the percent bias (PBIAS) and the determination coefficient (R²). According to the statistical criteria, the model is very good. CEQUEAU made simulations with a good natural response of the flows of the watershed.