Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Statistical Procedures For Evaluating Daily And Monthly Hydrologic Model Predictions, Marilyn E. Coffey, Stephen R. Workman, Joseph L. Taraba, Alex W. Fogle

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

The overall study objective was to evaluate the applicability of different qualitative and quantitative methods for comparing daily and monthly SWAT computer model hydrologic streamflow predictions to observed data, and to recommend statistical methods for use in future model evaluations. Statistical methods were tested using daily streamflows and monthly equivalent runoff depths. The statistical techniques included linear regression, Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency, nonparametric tests, t-test, objective functions, autocorrelation, and cross-correlation. None of the methods specifically applied to the non-normal distribution and dependence between data points for the daily predicted and observed data. Of the tested methods, median objective functions, sign test, autocorrelation, …