JUNE 2006 RIGON ET AL.

371

GEOtop: A Distributed Hydrological Model with Coupled Water and Energy Budgets
RICCARDO RIGON AND GIACOMO BERTOLDI
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, CUDAM, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

THOMAS M. OVER
Department of Geology/Geography, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois

(Manuscript received 1 March 2005, in final form 11 August 2005)

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a new distributed hydrological model, called GEOtop. The model accommodates
very complex topography and, besides the water balance, unlike most other hydrological models, integrates
all the terms in the surface energy balance equation. GEOtop uses a discretization of the landscape based
on digital elevation data. These digital elevation data are preprocessed to allow modeling of the effect of
topography on the radiation incident on the surface, both shortwave (including shadowing) and longwave
(accounting for the sky view factor). For saturated and unsaturated subsurface flow, GEOtop makes use of
a numerical solution of the 3D Richards’ equation in order to properly model, besides the lateral flow, the
vertical structure of water content and the suction dynamics. These characteristics are deemed necessary for
consistently modeling hillslope processes, initiation of landslides, snowmelt processes, and ecohydrological
phenomena as well as discharges during floods and interstorm periods. An accurate treatment of radiation
inputs is implemented in order to be able to return surface temperature. The motivation behind the model
is to combine the strengths and overcome the weaknesses of flood forecasting and land surface models. The
former often include detailed spatial description and lateral fluxes but usually lack appropriate knowledge
of the vertical ones. The latter are focused on vertical structure and usually lack spatial structure and
prediction of lateral fluxes. Outlines of the processes simulated and the methods used to simulate them are
given. A series of applications of the model to the Little Washita basin of Oklahoma using data from the
Southern Great Plains 1997 Hydrology Experiment (SGP97) is presented. These show the model’s ability
to reproduce the pointwise energy and water balance, showing that just an elementary calibration of a few
parameters is needed for an acceptable reproduction of discharge at the outlet, for the prediction of the
spatial distribution of soil moisture content, and for the simulation of a full year’s streamflow without
additional calibration.

1. Introduction: Design prerequisites
The study of river basin hydrology is focused on the
analysis of the interactions between the near-surface
soil and the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), which
occur mainly through the mediation of the soil itself,
the vegetation, and the turbulent and radiative energy
transfers taking place on the earth’s surface, and pos-
sible feedbacks from the ABL (e.g., soil moisture–
precipitation feedback mechanisms). In recent years,
hydrologic research has generally evolved toward a
comprehensive theory describing the water, energy,
Corresponding author address: Riccardo Rigon, Dept. of Civil
and Environmental Engineering, CUDAM, University of Trento,
Via Mesiano, 77, Trento TN 38050, Italy.
E-mail: riccardo.rigon@ing.unitn.it
and momentum exchanges between the land surface
and the atmosphere at several scales (Abbott 1992;
Reggiani et al. 1999), with the purpose of creating mod-
els that can provide improved mid- and long-term hy-
drologic forecasts and better prediction of the impacts
on the hydrologic cycle and on the earth’s ecosystems
resulting from changes in land use and in the climate
(Grayson and Blöschl 2000). Though inspired by this
trend toward improved predictions, the initial motiva-
tions behind the development of GEOtop were practi-
cal, as its development began with attempts to predict,
besides river discharges, landslide and debris flow ini-
tiation, snowpack evolution and ablation, and the water
budget (especially, accurate assessment of evapotrans-
piration and the distribution of soil moisture) in small
catchments and in complex mountain terrain.
None of the above phenomena can be currently pre-

© 2006 American Meteorological Society

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JHM497
372 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
dicted with enough accuracy and consistency to be op-
erationally useful (Committee on Hydrologic Science
2002). It is known that such phenomena are affected by
heterogeneity in soil hydraulic properties, land use,
landscape, topography and geological properties, and
soil moisture profile and surface–subsurface interac-
tions, but it has not been quantitatively assessed to what
extent. This cannot be explicitly obtained without a
small-scale distributed model that is capable of explic-
itly accounting for these characteristics. Furthermore, it
would require that both the water and energy balances
be solved (Grayson and Blöschl 2000). Solving the en-
ergy balance means, among other things, being able to
estimate surface temperature Ts, and it also requires
proper treatment of radiation physics (including the ef-
fect of the view angle and shadowing in complex ter-
rain) (Blöschl et al. 1991). However, since temperature
is absolutely necessary in modeling snowpack evolution
(e.g., Zanotti et al. 2004; Pomeroy et al. 2003), its simu-
lation should be included in the design of such a model.
Finally, the proper description of many of the hydro-
logic phenomena on hillslopes (including hill-
slope stability) and of water fluxes in the absence of
significant slopes, such as in plains or in riparian zones,
requires an adequate treatment of suction head in un-
saturated soils.
Just a few distributed hydrological models have all
the necessary characteristics. Since the blueprint of
Freeze and Harlan (1969), many “distributed” hydro-
logical models (Beven 2000) have been implemented to
predict the lateral distribution of water, ranging from
more conceptualized descriptions (e.g., Beven and
Kirkby 1979; Franchini and Pacciani 1991) to fully dis-
tributed approaches, such as the Système Hydrologique
Européen (SHE; Abbott et al. 1986), topographic ki-
nematic approximation and integration model (TOP-
KAPI; Ciarapica and Todini 2002), THALES (Grayson
et al. 1992), and others (Vertessy et al. 1993; Garrote
and Bras 1995; Bronstert and Plate 1997). At the catch-
ment scale, distributed approaches range from a three-
dimensional integration of the Richards’ equations as in
Paniconi and Putti (1994) or in the catchment hydro-
logical model (CATHY; Paniconi and Wood 1993; Pa-
niconi et al. 2003a) to a distributed description of the
hydrological effects of vegetation as in the Distributed
Hydrological Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) (Wig-
mosta et al. 1994). Nevertheless, the Distributed Mod-
els Intercomparison Project (DMIP) (Reed et al. 2004)
provides a recent, clear example of the continued em-
phasis in hydrologic modeling on flood forecasting; the
models involved, with a few exceptions (Liang and Xie
2001; Ivanov et al. 2004), were mostly event-oriented
rainfall-runoff models, which are successful in modeling
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VOLUME 7
floods but do not provide enough hydrological infor-
mation for forecasting other processes.
Vice versa, the land surface models (LSMs), unlike
the flood-forecasting models, are usually one-
dimensional (1D) vertical models that represent soil–
atmosphere interactions with a great degree of com-
plexity and accuracy, but they are usually not endowed
with a detailed representation of runoff and lateral
fluxes (Warrach et al. 2002), as they have been devel-
oped mainly to provide a land surface interface in sup-
port of atmospheric general circulations models
(GCMs). Reviews of LSMs are presented in Garratt
(1992, 1993) and Lakshmi et al. (2001). State-of-the-art
LSMs, inclusive of the ability to model snowmelt, freez-
ing soil, and multilayer canopy models are, to mention
a few, the biosphere–atmosphere transfer scheme
(BATS; Dickinson et al. 1986), the surface energy and
water balance (SEWAB; Mengelkamp et al. 1999), the
Noah LSM (Chen et al. 1996), and the National Center
for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) LSM (Bonan 1996).
GEOtop is designed to be an integration of the char-
acteristics of both LSMs and flood-forecasting models
and to include a detailed treatment of topographic in-
teraction with radiation, which is not usually available
in other models. Thus GEOtop is a distributed model;
it is a terrain-based model; it simulates not only the
water balance but also the energy balance; and it is built
for remote sensing data because it provides surface
temperature and an accurate treatment of radiation and
moisture in the upper soil (Troch et al. 2003).
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 contains
the description of model components, which begins
with a description of the discretization of the landscape
in GEOtop, followed by a description of local water
and energy budgets, and concluding with a description
of the processes driving the water and energy fluxes.
Section 3 contains three case studies based on the 1997
Southern Great Plains Hydrology Experiment (SGP97)
dataset. The case studies show the reproduction of the
water and energy balance at a point, a calibration of the
model on a flood event on the Little Washita basin in
Oklahoma, the spatial soil moisture distribution over
the basin, and the subsequent simulation of a yearlong
surface discharge hydrograph with no additional cali-
bration. Conclusions follow in section 4.
2. Description of model components
GEOtop simulates the fluxes and budgets of energy
and water on a landscape defined by three-dimensional
grid boxes, whose surfaces come from a digital eleva-
tion model (DEM) and whose lower boundaries are
located at some specified spatially varying depth. If
snow accumulates on top of the land surface, a new
JUNE 2006 RIGON ET AL.
layer is added on top of the DEM as described in Zan-
otti et al. (2004). Surface boundary conditions are given
by hydrometeorological measurements (rainfall, tem-
perature, wind velocity), regionalized as described in
Bertoldi (2004).
We present here the components of the first public
version of GEOtop. Information on previous versions
can be found in Bertoldi and Rigon (2004).
a. Landscape and equation discretization
GEOtop requires preprocessing of the catchment
DEM for which a special set of routines has been imple-
mented in an open source GIS, the Java Geographic
Resource Analysis Support System (JGRASS; http://
www.hydrologis.com). The outputs of these routines in-
clude estimation of drainage directions, slopes, curva-
ture, the channel network structure, shadowing, and the
sky view factor. Surface runoff is modeled to follow the
terrain surface according to a so-called D8 topology as
in Orlandini et al. (2003). Advantages and disadvan-
tages of various methodologies for carrying out these
computations are thoroughly discussed in Rodriguez-
Iturbe and Rinaldo (1997) and in Orlandini et al. (2003)
and are not further discussed here. Soil thickness can be
defined either using field data or the model by Heim-
sath et al. (1997), as discussed Bertoldi et al. (2006a).
The DEM identifies also the plan view of a three-
dimensional grid on which all the model’s equations are
discretized. The thickness of the discretized soil layers
is set up at run time; it is usually appropriate to assume
that the top layer is quite thin (e.g., 5 cm thick). Ac-
cording to criteria that the user can specify (e.g.,
Prosser and Abernethy 1996), some of the grid cells can
be identified as river network cells. River network cells
are treated the same as hillslope cells except for the
routing of surface runoff, which is modeled as described
in section 2c.
b. Water and energy budgets in GEOtop
The budgets of mass and energy in GEOtop may be
divided into three parts: the water budget, the energy
budget, and the radiation budget. The radiation budget
is presented separately from the energy budget, as it
creates the link between the model and remotely
sensed data.
1) WATER BUDGETS
GEOtop calculates the conservation of water accord-
ing to discretized versions of the continuity equations
for liquid water on the surface
⭸qsup共x, t兲
⫹ c共x, t兲ⵜ · qsup共x, t兲 ⫽ c共x, t兲qL共x, t兲
⭸t
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373
and in the soil
⭸␪共x, t兲
⫹ ⵜ · qsub共x, t兲 ⫽ ⫺S共x, t兲, 共2兲
⭸t
where vectors are in bold characters, x is the position
(L), t is time (T), qsup is the runoff discharge per unit
surface area [in units of L (length) T⫺1(time)], c(x) the
spatially varying kinematic wave celerity (L T⫺1), ⵜ· ⫽
(⳵/⳵x ⫹ ⳵/⳵y ⫹ ⳵/⳵z) is the divergence operator (L⫺1), qL
(T⫺1) is the unit volume flow exchange with the soil
[inflow from the soil (exfiltration) if positive, outflow to
the soil (infiltration) if negative], ␪ is the volumetric
water content in the soil (or snow), and ⵜ · qsub is the
flux divergence of water per unit volume (T⫺1), which
includes the water fluxes from adjacent cells, regulated
by Richards’ Eq. (6) below. The term S (T⫺1) includes
the exchanges between atmosphere and soil (evapora-
tion and transpiration) according to Eqs. (15)–(19). The
treatment of the boundary conditions is derived from
Bixio et al. (2000) and allows for surface flow to infil-
trate (when possible) and subsurface flow to return to
the surface (exfiltration and return flow). When chan-
nel pixels are present, surface runoff eventually turns
into channel flow, which is routed with a separate nu-
merical scheme as described below. Bottom boundary
conditions can be defined either by a flux at the bed-
rock–soil interface or by the conductivity of the deeper
bedrock. Except for evapotranspiration, water vapor
fluxes are neglected in the present implementation of
the model.
2) ENERGY BUDGET
The fluxes of energy for a unit volume of water in the
earth’s gravitational field are given by the sum of a
“thermal” part, which is a function of the net radiation
Rn, the thermal fluxes into the ground Gr, energy inputs
deriving from precipitation P, sensible heat flux H, la-
tent heat flux ␭ET (where ␭ is the latent heat of vapor-
ization per unit mass), and a fluid-mechanical part (de-
pendent on the hydraulic head). The action of the me-
chanical part in producing internal energy by friction is
neglected in GEOtop according to the common prac-
tice. This results in a partial decoupling of the water and
energy balances, which however remain strongly con-
nected through the evapotranspiration term and the de-
pendence of hydraulic conductivity on temperature.
The energy balance is computed with respect to vol-
umes where the energy content of the water and soil are
considered together and for the same grid boxes as the
soil water balance. In continuous form, the energy bal-
ance is written as
⭸U共x, t兲
共1兲 ⫹ ⵜ · g共x, t兲 ⫽ 0, 共3兲
⭸t
374 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
where U (E/L3) is the internal energy density and g is
the energy flux per unit area (E L⫺2 T⫺1). In the actual
numerical implementation of Eq. (3), lateral energy
fluxes have been neglected, as they are usually much
smaller than the vertical fluxes, even though at small
spatial scales (⬃10 m) lateral energy advection can be
nonnegligible (Albertson and Parlange 1999). Radia-
tion, sensible heat, and precipitation energy input are
effective only on the surface layer, that is, ⵜ g ⫽ Rn ⫹
P ⫹ Gr ⫹ H ⫹ ␭ET on the surface layer and only ⵜ g ⫽
Gr ⫹ ␭ET on the other soil layers. The ␭ET term in-
cludes both bare soil evaporation (only for the first
layer) and canopy transpiration (depending from root
density of each layer), as explained later. The top layer
can be the snowpack, if present, and can have any thick-
ness. In this case, the internal energy content U is di-
vided between energy of the ice component and energy
of the water component (Zanotti et al. 2004). Heat
fluxes in the ground between the layers,
⭸T共x, t兲
Gr ⫽ ⫺␭s共x, t, ␪兲 , 共4兲
⭸z
are a function of the soil temperature gradient accord-
ing to the Fourier heat diffusion equation where the
thermal conductivity ␭s(x, t) depends on the mineral
properties of the soil and on the actual (time varying)
water content ␪ in the grid element. Freezing soil pro-
cesses are included as described in Bertoldi et al.
(2006b). The boundary condition in the deepest soil
layer is the soil temperature obtained from the analyti-
cal solution of the Fourier law, using an annual sinu-
soidal forcing. The soil temperature in Eq. (4) is ob-
tained in the model by the integration of the full surface
energy budget (Best 1998), solving the system given by
the partial differential Eqs. (3) describing the soil tem-
perature profile.
3) RADIATION BUDGET
An accurate calculation of the net radiation is essen-
tial for a hydrological model working in complex ter-
rain (Dubayah et al. 1990). Solar radiation geometry is
treated in GEOtop as in Iqbal (1983), and all the ra-
diative corrections needed for complex topography, in-
cluding shadowing of direct solar radiation by sur-
rounding mountains and the effect of topography on
diffuse radiation, are included. Shadowing is expressed
by the dimensionless factor sh(x, t), which is 0 if the grid
cell is in shadow (no direct radiation) and 1 if radiation
from the sun hits the surface. The shadowing factor is
calculated for any position, x, and for any instant, t,
depending on the interplay of solar position and topog-
raphy. The effects of topography on diffuse radiation
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VOLUME 7
are expressed through the sky view factor V(x), which
indicates the sky fraction visible at a point. The rel-
evance of V(x) for the radiative balance in mountain
areas has been underlined, for instance, by Blöschl et
al. (1991). Many models neglect shadowing and the sky
view factor, causing large errors in the local energy
balance estimation in mountainous catchments. The al-
gorithms for estimating these terms are fully docu-
mented in Bertoldi and Rigon (2004). Taking into ac-
count the effects of shadowing and of the sky view fac-
tor, the flux of net radiation Rn is
Rn ⫽ 关sh共x, t兲R↓SW P ⫹ V共x兲R↓SW D兴关1 ⫺ V共x兲a兴
⫹ V共x兲␧aR↓LW ⫺ V共x兲␧s␴T s4, 共5兲
⫺2 ⫺1
where R↓SW (E L T ) is the shortwave net radiation
at the surface obtained by correcting the solar radiation
incoming at the atmosphere top (the subscript P refers
to the direct component and D to the diffuse; note the
diffuse component is not influenced by shadowing but
is proportional to the sky view factor), a is the short-
wave albedo, ␧a is the atmospheric emissivity, ␧s is the
longwave soil (or snow) emissivity, ␴ is the Stefan–
Boltzman constant {5.6704 10⫺8 [W(m2K4)⫺1]}, R↓LW
the incoming longwave radiation, calculated according
to Brutsaert (1975), depending on air temperature, air
humidity, and cloud cover, and Ts is surface tempera-
ture. The factor [1 ⫺ V(x)a] accounts for the shortwave
radiation reflected by the surfaces surrounding the
point. The last two terms of Eq. (5) are multiplied by
V(x) to account for the longwave radiation emitted by
the surfaces surrounding the point, under the hypoth-
esis of radiative equilibrium.
Remote sensors detect only limited bands of the ra-
diation spectrum and not the whole integrated infrared
(LW) and visible parts (SW) of it as in (5). The radia-
tion budget code was separated in GEOtop from the
energy budget code because future versions of the
model will be able to return the radiative intensity sepa-
rated into optical radiation bands where remote sensors
operate.
c. Dynamic hydrology in GEOtop
Water and energy fluxes, which control the budgets
described above, are computed according to gradients
of energy potentials as described below. A more de-
tailed description of the dynamics including complete
equations can be found in Bertoldi and Rigon (2004).
The snow module and its preliminary application to a
case study are described in Zanotti et al. (2004).
1) SUBSURFACE SATURATED–UNSATURATED FLOW
To model soil moisture dynamics properly in the soil
layers, GEOtop utilizes the integration of Richards’
JUNE 2006
equations (Richards 1931; Freeze and Harlan 1972) in
three dimensions (3D). For some of the processes esti-
mation, simpler approaches could have been used such
as the hillslope-storage Boussinesq (hsB) equation de-
veloped by Troch et al. (2003), Paniconi et al. (2003b),
and Hilberts et al. (2004), which has been shown to
work generally very well as compared to the 3D Rich-
ards’ equation for simulation of saturated subsurface
flow dynamics and to be much more computationally
efficient. However, GEOtop is intended to simulate
also the suction dynamics, and, in this, solving Rich-
ards’ equation is necessary.
The numerical scheme used is new and is described in
Tamanini (2003) and in Bertoldi and Rigon (2004). The
use of Richards’ equation removes the need to make an
assumption of stationary conditions in subsurface flows
[as is assumed, e.g., in Beven and Kirkby (1979)], and
therefore it is possible to describe the transients of flow
and infiltration. Richards’ equation is here written ac-
cording to Paniconi and Putti (1994) as
qsub ⫽ ⫺KsKr共SW兲ⵜ共␩z ⫹ ␺兲,
⭸␺
␴共SW兲 ⫽ ⵜ · 关Ks共T兲Kr共SW兲ⵜ共␺ ⫹ ␩z兲兴 ⫺ S,
⭸t
where the dependence from space and time of the vari-
ables has been dropped for notational simplicity, ␴ (SW)
⫽ SWSs ⫹ ␾ ⳵SW/⳵␺ is the storage term (L⫺1), SW(␺) ⫽
␪/␪s is the relative water saturation (the ratio between
the volumetric soil moisture content ␪ and the saturated
moisture content ␪s), ␾ is the porosity (dimensionless),
Ss is the aquifer specific storage coefficient (L⫺1), ␺ is
the pressure hydraulic head (L), ⵜ is the gradient op-
erator, Ks(T ) is the saturated hydraulic conductivity,
and T is the temperature (K). Here, Kr(SW) ⬅ K(SW)/
KS(T ) is the relative hydraulic conductivity, z is the
vertical upward coordinate, and S represents the modu-
lus of the source or sink volumetric flow per unit vol-
ume [the same as in Eq. (2)]. The saturated hydraulic
conductivity Ks(T ) has in fact two components, the ver-
tical, Ks ␷(T ), and the lateral Ks h(T ) grid-averaged val-
ues (Kumar 2004). In the model they are considered
proportional according to an anisotropy ratio given by
␣K ⫽ Ks h/Ks ␷, which is used as a calibration parameter.
The relation between ␺ and ␪ [e.g., Eq. (2)] in
GEOtop is given through the van Genuchten (1980)
schematization,
冋冉 冊 册
1 ␪ ⫺ ␪r 1Ⲑm 1Ⲑn
␺⫽ ⫺1 , 共8兲
␣ ␪s ⫺ ␪r
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RIGON ET AL. 375
where ␪r is the residual water content (dimensionless),
and ␣(L⫺1), m, and n (both dimensionless) are param-
eters. Such parameters, as well as the saturated hydrau-
lic conductivity, are 3D fields in the model and many
different strategies for their assignment are possible.
For instance, they can be derived from the soil texture
by means of the pedotransfer functions proposed, for
example, by Vereecken et al. (1989) and Leij et al.
(2004) or by regionalization of the appropriate field
measurements. The relative hydraulic conductivity is
expressed as a function of the water content as in
Mualem (1976). Even though we did not pursue a com-
plete thermodynamic treatment of saturated–
unsaturated flow as in Milly (1974), saturated hydraulic
conductivity is made dependent on soil temperature
through viscosity, which increases by a factor 2 from 10°
to 40°C, allowing the treatment of soil freezing and
seasonal variation of hydraulic characteristics that oth-
erwise require multiple calibrations of soil parameters
through the year.
The description of vertical infiltration in GEOtop
共6兲 takes into account the surface fraction actually covered
in water, assuming the presence of microrelief in the
terrain, which is parameterized by a surface roughness
parameter according to Smith (2002) as
共7兲 I ⫽ I0 if d ⱖ h0, 共9兲
I ⫽ I0dⲐh0 if d ⬍ h0, 共10兲
where I is the effective infiltration rate, I0 is the infil-
tration rate with no microrelief, d is the surface water
depth, and h0 is the microrelief height.
Runoff at the surface is generated because the pre-
cipitation intensity is greater than the soil surface infil-
tration capacity (infiltration excess runoff; Horton
1933) or the water table level rises above the soil sur-
face (saturation excess runoff; Dunne 1978). Both of
these possibilities are dealt with the Richards’ equation
solver and are implemented according to the compre-
hensive analysis of boundary conditions made by Pani-
coni and Putti (1994). In addition, Richards’ equation
allows for water to redistribute laterally and even move
uphill or exfiltrate according to local suction.
2) SURFACE RUNOFF
Runoff is routed according to a kinematic scheme
that also accounts for subgrid-scale rilling and hetero-
geneity in roughness:
⭸qsup共x, t兲 ⭸qsup共x, t兲
⫹ c共x, t兲 ⫽ c关共x, t兲兴qL, 共11兲
⭸t ⭸s
c共x, t兲 ⫽ Cmd共x, t兲␥ 关ⵜz共x兲兴0.5,
共12兲
376 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
where Eq. (11) is the continuity Eq. (1) written along
the drainage direction coordinate s (L), qsup is the run-
off discharge per unit surface area (L T⫺1) along s, c(x)
is the spatially varying kinematic wave celerity module
(L T⫺1), Cm is a resistance coefficient, [L⫺(1⫺␥) T⫺1], d
is the surface water depth (L), ⵜz(x) is the local slope
(dimensionless), the exponent ␥ (dimensionless) is vari-
able as a function of the runoff phenomena geometry,
and qL (T⫺1) is the unit volume vertical inflow (posi-
tive: exfiltration) or outflow (negative: infiltration)
from any surface cell to the soil. The qL term contains
the term Si from Eq. (7) and allows for runoff to rein-
filtrate downhill. The exponent 0.5 in Eq. (12) is cali-
brated or specified according to the literature (e.g.,
Smith 2002).
3) CHANNEL FLOW
GEOtop does not need a channel network to be
identified since water can move downhill according to
(12). However, channel geometry and roughness adjust
themselves to maintain certain mean flow characteris-
tics (e.g., Rodriguez-Iturbe et al. 1992) and thus it is
generally useful to separate channel flow routing from
the hillslope runoff routing. In the channels, surface
water flow is described by the convolution of the in-
coming discharge with the solution of the de Saint-
Venant parabolic equation using a constant celerity in
the whole network as proposed in Mesa and Mifflin
(1986), Rinaldo et al. (1991), and D’Odorico and Rigon
(2003):
Qc共t兲 ⫽ AT 冕冕 0
t Lmax
0
sW共␶,s兲
公4␲D共t ⫺ ␶兲3
exp
冋 ⫺
共s ⫺ uc共t ⫺ ␶兲兲2
4D共t ⫺ ␶兲
册ds d␶,
where Qc(t) is the discharge at the basin outlet (L3
T⫺1), AT is the basin area, W(␶, s) (T⫺1) is the inflow of
the water from the hillsides into the channel network at
a distance s (L) from the outlet and at a time ␶ [i.e., it
is a dynamical width function (Rodriguez-Iturbe and
Rinaldo 1997)], uc is a mean celerity (L T⫺1), D is a
hydrodynamic dispersion coefficient (L2 T⫺1), and Lmax
is the maximum distance from the outlet measured
along the network (L).
4) TURBULENT FLUXES
Sensible H and latent ␭ET heat fluxes are determined
by similarity theory (Monin and Obukhov 1954). The
vertical sensible heat flux H (E T⫺1 L⫺2) is expressed in
a form integrated between the surface and a reference
height as a function of the atmospheric turbulence
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VOLUME 7
through the bulk turbulent heat transfer coefficient CH
(dimensionless), the wind speed uw, and the gradient
between the surface soil/snow temperature Ts and the
air temperature Ta as
Qs ⫽ ␳cpCH uw共Ts ⫺ Ta兲, 共14兲
where ␳ is the density of the air, and cp is the specific
heat of the air at constant pressure. Here, Ts is obtained
from solving the energy balance, and Ta is a measured
external forcing; CH is a bulk turbulent transfer coeffi-
cient that accounts for the turbulent transfer processes
and the different roughness length zT of the various
surfaces through a mapping of the land use and a pa-
rameterization of the stability of the ABL. In particu-
lar, CH is determined using similarity theory (Garratt
1992) and is expressed according the theory of Louis
(1979), which uses the Richardson number (a function
of the potential temperature gradient between soil and
atmosphere) as a stability parameter. Similarity func-
tions are given by the approach of Kot and Song (1998).
The total evapotranspiration is a sink in (7) made up
of the sum of evaporation or sublimation from the soil
or snow surface EG, transpiration from the vegetation
ETC, and evaporation of the precipitation intercepted
by the vegetation EVC, that is,
ET ⫽ ETC ⫹ EG ⫹ EVC. 共15兲
Every cell has a fraction covered by vegetation and a
fraction covered by bare soil, and the vegetation frac-
tion contains an interception store, modeled as in Men-
gelkamp et al. (1999). The model uses a single-layer
canopy model, and the leaf temperature is assumed to
be equal to soil temperature, as in Garratt (1992). The
green vegetation fraction is static, and there is not a
共13兲
mechanism to automatically vary the leaf area index
(LAI) to model plant development, but it may be
changed by external input to the model.
The components of the total evapotranspiration are
computed as functions of the potential evapotranspira-
tion EP, which is computed as a function of the gradient
between saturation-specific moisture at the soil surface
temperature q*(Ts) and the atmospheric specific mois-
ture q(Ta) (M/M) as
␭EP ⫽ ␭␳CE uw关q*共Ts兲 ⫺ q共Ta兲兴, 共16兲
where the bulk turbulent water vapor transfer coeffi-
cient CE is taken as equal (though a simplification) to
CH. GEOtop does not contain a special parameteriza-
tion of the wind profile inside the canopy cover, but it
uses a displacement height to properly parameterize
vegetation roughness. Bare soil evaporation EG is re-
lated to the water content of the first layer through the
soil resistance analogy (Bonan 1996) as
JUNE 2006 RIGON ET AL.
ra
EG ⫽ 共1 ⫺ s␷兲EP , 共17兲
ra ⫹ rs
where s␷ (dimensionless) is the fraction of soil covered
by the vegetation and ra (L2 T M⫺1) is the aerodynamic
resistance; ra ⫽ 1/(␳ CE uw). The soil resistance rs is a
function of the water content of the first layer as in
Feddes et al. (2001). The evaporation from wet vegeta-
tion is calculated as
EVC ⫽ s␷ EP␦W,
where ␦W is the wet vegetation fraction, computed fol-
lowing Deardorff (1978). The transpiration is calcu-
lated as
n i
兺r
f root ra
ETC ⫽ s␷EP共1 ⫺ ␦W兲 . 共19兲
i a ⫹ r ic
The root fraction f iroot of each soil layer is calculated
decreasing linearly from the surface to a maximum root
depth zroot, depending on the vegetation type. The
canopy resistance r ic in soil layer i depends on solar
radiation, vapor pressure deficit, temperature as in Best
(1998), and on water content in the root zone as in
Wigmosta et al. (1994).
d. Numerics
GEOtop equations are discretized according to a fi-
nite-volume method, and time resolution is the smallest
required for the numerical stability of all the processes
described (or by the time step of the forcings), usually
between 1 and 5 min. Grid cell horizontal dimensions
can range from 2 to 500 m, and the number of soil layers
and the maximum soil thickness is arbitrary. All the
processes are solved using the same time step. GEOtop
is coded in ANSI C and is compiled to run on Linux,
Mac OS X, and Windows. The first public version was
released in December 2005 under a General Public Li-
cense (GPL), and can be downloaded from http://
bedu.ing.unitn.it/GEOtopWiki. The code will be thor-
oughly documented with doxygen (http://www.
doxygen.org). Further information about the numerics
of the model can be found in Bertoldi et al. (2006b).
3. Tests of GEOtop in the Little Washita
watershed
An opportunity to validate and analyze the perfor-
mance of GEOtop is offered by the SGP97 dataset.
Three different kinds of simulations were performed.
The first set of simulations (A) uses GEOtop to repro-
duce the energy and water fluxes at the pixel scale to
assess the physical realism present in the model. The
second set of simulations (B) reproduces a flood event
and soil moisture evolution and calibrates some routing
parameters. The initial water content profile was ob-
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377
tained starting with a saturated profile and running the
model several times on the meteorological forcings of
the period analyzed until the spatial average surface
soil moisture reached the same value as the Electrically
Steered Thinned Array Radiometer (ESTAR) average.
This set of simulations is further used for a simple pa-
rameter sensitivity study. The third simulation (C), fi-
nally, forecasts a yearlong record of measured dis-
charges without any further calibration, using the pa-
共18兲 rameters derived from simulations A and B. Two
versions of this simulation were performed. One was
performed without any additional calibration, and in
the other, an adjustment of the vegetation cover frac-
tion was made.
a. The dataset
SGP97 took place from 18 June to 17 July 1997 in
central Oklahoma and is discussed in detail by Jackson
et al. (1999), Mohanty et al. (2002), and Mohr et al.
(2000). The basin primarily investigated was the Little
Washita watershed, which has been the focus of exten-
sive hydrologic research by the Agricultural Research
Service (ARS) (Allen and Naney 1991). The modeled
portion of the watershed (i.e., upstream of U.S. Geo-
logical Survey stream gauge 07327550, east of Ninne-
kah) covers an area of 603 km2. The topography of the
region is moderately rolling with a maximum relief over
the basin of less than 200 m (Fig. la). Land use is domi-
nated by rangeland and pasture (63%), with significant
areas of winter wheat and other crops concentrated in
the floodplain and western portions of the watershed
area. As part of the ARS Micronet, there are a total of
42 recording rain gauges distributed at a 5-km spacing
over the watershed (Fig. 1b); these provided the pre-
cipitation data used in this analysis. For meteorological
data other than precipitation, the three Oklahoma Me-
sonet stations, Acme (ACME), Apache (APAC), and
Ninnekah (NINN), located inside or very near the basin
were used. Moreover, at the National Oceanic and At-
mospheric Administration (NOAA) (LW02) flux site
(marked in Fig. 1b), measurements of soil properties,
soil moisture and temperature, and surface energy
fluxes are available.
b. Simulations set A: Pixel-scale simulations of the
vertical profile dynamics at the NOAA (LW02)
flux site
The purpose of these simulations is to test the pixel-
scale behavior of GEOtop. Because of this, the lateral
water fluxes have been inhibited (but infiltration is al-
lowed). The model was initialized with the measured
soil moisture and temperature profiles. Calibration was
performed only on the following parameters related to
378 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 7

FIG. 1. Spatial properties of the Little Washita watershed. (upper left) Topography, (upper right) precipitation
on 10 Jul 1997 with the location of the meteorological stations used in GEOtop simulations, (bottom right) soil
texture (data from Mohanty et al. 2002), and (bottom left) land cover (data from Goddard Earth Sciences Data and
Information Services Center).

the energy budget: the thermal roughness length zT
(Garratt 1993), of which the turbulent transport coeffi-
cients [CH and CE in Eq. (14)] are a function; the frac-
tion of the cell covered by canopy [s␷ in Eq. (15)], which
controls the rate between bare soil evaporation and
transpiration; and the soil thermal conductivity ␭s. Cali-
brated values for this location are zT ⫽ 8.6 mm, s␷ ⫽ 0.9,
and ␭s ⫽ 0.077 J kg⫺1 K⫺1. Other soil properties have
been kept equal to local field values as derived from
Mohanty et al. (2002). The pixel-scale hourly evolution
of energy balance components are illustrated in Fig. 2,
and rainfall, surface soil moisture, and temperature
variations are illustrated in Fig. 3. The model is capable
of simulating infiltration related to small rainfall events
and daily soil moisture evaporation cycles, as shown in
Fig. 3. The model outputs show a good agreement with
the local energy fluxes measured with eddy correlation
systems, except for a slight overestimation of nocturnal
sensible heat fluxes (Fig. 2), which perhaps reveals
some deficiencies of the Kot and Song (1998) param-
eterization of the nocturnal stable boundary layer.
There is also a systematic overestimation of the ground
heat flux during early morning, resulting from the mod-
el’s energy balance closure constraints, which is also
reflected by a slight overestimation of the soil tempera-
ture as shown in Fig. 3. Moreover, negative values of
sensible heat flux H in the dataset could be due to the
procedure chosen to process the measurements. A
model structural change could be then suggested that,
for instance, used a two-layer canopy model to provide
a more accurate estimation of the diurnal cycle of soil
temperature.
c. Simulation set B: Calibration and parameter
sensitivity of discharge for the period from
26 June to 16 July 1997
The goal of this set of simulations is to determine the
surface and subsurface flow parameters later used in a
longer simulation, and to do some sensitivity analysis.
During the simulated period the weather was quite fair,

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JUNE 2006 RIGON ET AL. 379

FIG. 2. Comparison between modeled and observed energy balance components at the
NOAA flux site, 27 Jun to 17 Jul 1997.

with mostly hot sunny days, during which the soil dried
quickly as result of intense summer evaporation. A
strong convective storm on 11 July (Fig. 1b) with more
than 50 mm of rainfall in 7 h (averaged over the basin)
caused a flood with a peak discharge of 60 m3 s⫺1. Rain
patterns for this event were reconstructed by means of
kriging techniques. Simulations were performed with a
grid resolution of 200 m and five soil layers of increasing
thickness (the first one of 5 cm). Soil depth was given by
field measurements by the Oklahoma State University for
Application of Remote Sensing Laboratory and ranges
from 0.5 to 1.5 m. As a lower boundary condition, an
impermeable surface was imposed. Heat fluxes at the
bottom were regulated on the mean annual surface
temperature and excursion, as explained in section 2b.
Surface soil moisture maps with a resolution of 800
m, derived from Jackson et al. (1999) from the flights of
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) P-3B aircraft fitted with the ESTAR, an L-
band (1.413 GHz) passive microwave sensor, were used
for model initialization and verification. The initial wa-
ter content profile was obtained starting with a satu-
rated profile and running the model several times using
the meteorological forcing from 26 June to 16 July 1997
until the spatial-averaged surface soil moisture reached
the same value as the ESTAR average.
Surface values of hydraulic conductivity and the van
Genuchten parameters [see Eq. (8)] were obtained
from soil texture data from Mohanty et al. (2002) using
the Vereecken et al. (1989) pedotransfer function ap-
proach. To assign the 3D field structure of the saturated
hydraulic conductivity, an exponential decay with
depth was assumed according to Ks ⫽ e⫺fz z⬘, where z⬘
is the cell depth below the surface; the factor fz (L⫺1)
was determined by calibration. The canopy fraction S␷,
the root depth zroot, the roughness length zT, and the
albedo a are assigned according to the land-cover map
(data available from Goddard Earth Sciences Data and
Information Services Center; Fig. 1c). Global param-
eters related to the water budget were calibrated
against the measured discharges: the channel celerity
uc, the hydraulic diffusivity D, the surface runoff resis-
tance coefficient Cm [all in Eq. (13)], and the anisotropy
ratio ␣k [in Eq. (6)]. Values of the spatial average of the
parameters are given in Table 1.
Comparison of the measured and calibrated dis-

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380 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 7

FIG. 3. (top) Observed rainfall and comparison between modeled and observed (middle)
surface soil moisture and (bottom) temperature at the NOAA flux site, 27 Jun to 17 Jul 1997.

charge hydrograph is shown in Fig. 4a, and the ESTAR
measured and simulated basin-average soil moisture is
shown in Fig. 4b. It can be seen that it was possible to
obtain a good calibration to the main flood hydrograph.
Also fairly good is the uncalibrated forecasting of the
average soil moisture, which implies that, on average,
evapotranspiration (ET) was properly simulated. Cu-
mulative water balance simulation results (Fig. 5) show
that total evaporation ET flux dominates the water
losses during this period compared to discharge Qc; in
particular, only a small fraction of the 11 July storm
precipitation became runoff.
The sensitivity of the discharge during the major
storm event on 11 July of the parameters Ks h, Ks ␷, ␪r,
␪s, ␣, m, n, and S␷ is shown in Fig. 6. Among the cali-
brated parameters summarized in Table 1, the vertical
hydraulic conductivity (Fig. 6a) determines the maxi-
mum infiltration capacity and greatly influences the
surface runoff formation, because it controls the
amount of Hortonian-type runoff, and therefore the
magnitude of the peak discharge. The horizontal hy-
draulic conductivity, Ks h, on the contrary, primarily in-
fluences the flood tail because it determines the sub-
surface runoff quantity (Fig. 6b). A large value of Ks h,

TABLE 1. Basin-averaged values of the parameters in the application of GEOtop to the Little Washita basin.

Parameter symbol Description Units Basin-averaged value Source

u Channel celerity m s⫺1 2.0 Calibration
D Channel diffusivity m2 s⫺1 1000 Calibration
Ks h /Ks ␷ Hydraulic conductivity anisotropy ratio 50 Calibration
fz Hydraulic conductivity decay factor m⫺1 0.5 Calibration
Cm Hydraulic surface resistance m1/3 s⫺1 0.1 Calibration
␪r Residual water content 0.06 Literature
␪s Saturated water content 0.41 Literature
␣ van Genuchten parameter cm⫺1 0.035 Literature
m van Genuchten parameter 1.0 Literature
n van Genuchten parameter 0.98 Literature
␭s Thermal soil conductivity J kg⫺1 K⫺1 0.077 Calibration
S␷ Canopy fraction 0.78 Literature
zroot Root depth m 0.82 Literature
zT Roughness length m 0.021 Literature
a Albedo 0.2 Literature

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JUNE 2006 RIGON ET AL.
FIG. 4. Comparison between GEOtop simulations and measure-
ments in the Little Washita watershed from discharge 27 Jun to 17
Jul 1997. The parameters used in the GEOtop simulations are
given in Table 1. (a) Discharge at the outlet; (b) basin-averaged
surface soil moisture, simulated in surface soil layer (top 5 cm)
compared to ESTAR estimated value.
however, causes soil drainage that is too rapid, leading
to water content values that are too low compared to
the measured values. Residual water content ␪r, which
controls the total basin storage capacity, has a greater
influence on discharge than the water content value at
saturation ␪s (Figs. 6c and 6d). The van Genuchten pa-
rameters ␣, n, and m [Eq. (8)] have also a significant
influence on peak discharge (Figs. 6e–g). In particular,
very low values of ␣ (which means increased suction
potential for the same saturation) lead to a bimodal
behavior of the hydrograph. These simulations of this
event are not significantly affected by the vegetation-
cover fraction S␷ (Fig. 6h), which, however, plays a ma-
jor role in the energy budget calibration. Other sensi-
tivity analyses on soil thickness and river network ex-
tension are the subject of Bertoldi et al. (2006).
d. Surface soil moisture evolution in the basin
The soil moisture distribution derived from the
ESTAR data by Jackson et al. (1999), available for the
same period in which we performed the calibration, was
compared to that produced by the top 5-cm layer of
the model. As shown in Fig. 7, GEOtop predicted sur-
face moisture patterns that appear visually similar to
ESTAR estimates. The soil moisture maps produced by
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381
FIG. 5. Cumulative water balance of the Little Washita water-
shed, 27 Jun to 17 Jul 1997, as determined by GEOtop model
simulations with parameters indicated in Table 1.
the model do not show the influence of land use; how-
ever, on the contrary, the soil texture (and by inference
hydraulic conductivity) patterns become evident during
the dry periods (3 and 16 July), as can be seen from the
comparison of Fig. 7 with Fig. 1. The spatial distribution
of precipitation, as pointed out by the comparison of
the precipitation field of 10 July in Fig. 1 to the soil
moisture map of 11 July reported in Fig. 7, strongly
determines the spatial distribution of the soil surface
water content, mostly in the first hour immediately fol-
lowing the rainfall. According to the simulations, as
qualitatively shown in the 11 July map of Fig. 7, topog-
raphy starts exerting its influence only some hours
later, by concentrating moisture in the topographic con-
vergence zones.
The simulated averaged surface soil moisture values
are very similar to those estimated by ESTAR, as was
shown in Fig. 4b. However, the frequency distribution
of global measured and simulated water content are
somewhat different (Fig. 8). In particular, GEOtop pre-
dicted a larger soil moisture variance than ESTAR
measured (especially in the case of rain events: see 11
and 16 July in Fig. 8). To understand the reason for this
discrepancy, we also ran some simulations on the same
dataset (using a coarser 1000-m grid) with the Variable
Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model (Liang et al. 1994),
obtaining distributions, which at least show that the
difference is not simply an effect of grid resolution (re-
call that ESTAR has a resolution of 800 m). In fact,
these differences among model simulation results and
ESTAR products may be caused not only by errors in
the model but also in the data assimilation used to ob-
tain the ESTAR product. In fact, in the computation of
the ESTAR soil moisture product soil dielectric prop-
erties, which themselves depend on moisture content,
must be assumed.
382 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 7

FIG. 6. Sensitivity of the flood hydrograph of 11 Jul 1997 in the Little Washita watershed, simulated with
GEOtop, to different parameters: (a) Ks ␷ , (b) Ks h, (c) ␪r, (d) ␪s, (e) ␣, (f) n, (g) m, and (h) S␷. Here Ks ␷ and
Ks h are vertical and lateral saturated hydraulic conductivity at the surface, respectively; ␪r and ␪s are residual and
saturated water content; ␣, n, and m are parameters of the van Genuchten (1980) curve; and S␷ is the averaged
fractional canopy cover. The measured value of the peak discharge was 60 m3 s⫺1.

e. Simulation set C: The forecasting of the 1997
streamflow
In this simulation for the whole year of 1997, the
calibrated parameters of the previous simulations have
been kept constant. Only the three Oklahoma Mesonet
stations (Fig. 1) had precipitation data available for the
whole year; therefore the model was forced only with
these three stations. The model was initialized by forc-
ing it repeatedly with the meteorological conditions of

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JUNE 2006 RIGON ET AL.
FIG. 7. Volumetric surface soil water content of the Little
Washita watershed. (left) Estimated using the ESTAR remote
sensor. (right) Simulated using the GEOtop model. For (top) 3,
(middle) 11, and (bottom) 16 July 1997.
the year (periodic forcing) until a dynamical equilib-
rium was achieved after various periodic cycles had
passed.
The comparison between the daily measured and the
GEOtop-simulated streamflow with no additional cali-
bration (the gray band bottom) is shown in Fig. 9 for
the whole year of 1997. The model preserves fairly well
the total streamflow volume, but tends to overestimate
peak discharges, except for the event of late May when
there is a considerable underestimation of the mea-
sured flood. The underestimation for this event, how-
ever, could be caused by inadequate rainfall inputs,
since the runoff ratio of that event is considerably
larger that that of the others. Unfortunately, more de-
tailed rainfall data was not available to assess this issue.
The July event used for calibration is simulated slightly
differently in this simulation compared with the calibra-
tion simulation because here different initial conditions
and rainfall are used.
As Fig. 9b underlines, an increased difference in base
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383
flow also appeared in summer, which could be ex-
plained with a lower actual ET than was simulated. This
missing evaporation in the simulation was small in
terms of total volumes but presented a definite trend in
summer that eventually could be strongly decreased by
changing the average fractional vegetation cover from
s␷ ⫽ 0.78 to s␷ ⫽ 0.89, in accord with Mohanty et al.
(2000), who showed that bare soil evaporates more
than vegetation cover in a mixed vegetation pixel. The
upper limit of the gray band of Fig. 9 shows the evolu-
tion of the discharge once s␷ has been raised since the
beginning of the year. It emphasizes that an incorrect
evapotranspiration estimation results in an incorrect
average soil moisture content with possible increasing
errors as time elapses (Fig. 10). Eventually the pattern
of soil moisture would also depart from actual, since ET
is heterogeneous in the presence of heterogeneous to-
pography, and hydraulic conductivity presents a strong
nonlinear dependence on soil moisture volumetric con-
tent.
4. Conclusions
In this paper, a new distributed hydrological model,
GEOtop, is presented. This model is an attempt to cre-
ate a catchment simulator that not only accounts for
water redistribution in a very detailed fashion (solving
the 3D Richards’ equation), but also includes a coupled
energy and radiation budget. The model accommodates
very complex topography and its effects on the incident
radiation, both shortwave (with shadowing) and long-
wave (with accounting for the sky view factor).
The application of the model to the Little Washita
basin leads to the following conclusions. The set of
simulations A shows that the model is capable of accu-
rately reproducing the local energy budget and the local
infiltration once initialized with measured parameters
and calibrated for the roughness length, the fraction of
cell covered by canopies, and the heat capacity of the
soil. The set of simulations B shows that GEOtop, with
calibration and accurate initialization, gives a precise
reproduction of a peak flow, with no more calibration
than a typical rainfall-runoff model would require (i.e.,
adjusting the river network celerity, the surface and
subsurface celerity on the hillsides). This result con-
firms the common belief that it is not necessary to have
a detailed evapotranspiration estimation for flood fore-
casting. However, since the initial soil moisture condi-
tions were obtained with a dynamical procedure, and
the set of simulations C show that flood peaks can be
sensitive to such conditions, more investigation is
needed to assess the interplay between initialization
procedures and parameter identification.
384 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY VOLUME 7

FIG. 8. Volumetric surface (top 5 cm) soil water content frequency distributions, comparison between ESTAR
data, GEOtop model, and VIC model. (upper left) 29 Jun, (upper right) 3 Jul, (bottom right) 11 Jul, and (bottom
left) 16 Jul 1997.

At the basin scale, the model is capable of capturing
the spatial distribution of the surface soil moisture, with
no additional calibration, and it can be used as a tool to
understand what the major controls on soil moisture
patterns are. Simulated data show that in the Little
Washita basin the main controlling factors on the soil
moisture spatial distribution are soil properties during
dry periods and precipitation during wet periods, con-
firming the finding by Mohr et al. (2000). A few hours
after precipitation, the topographic redistribution of

FIG. 9. Comparison between measured discharge and the GEOtop simulated discharge in
the Little Washita watershed for the whole 1997 year: (a) linear scale; (b) logarithmic scale.
The black line is the measured discharge; the upper limit of the gray band is the simulated
discharge with s␷ ⫽ 0.89 (with less bare soil evaporation and more transpiration); the lower
limit of the gray band is the simulated discharge with s␷ ⫽ 0.78.

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JUNE 2006 RIGON ET AL. 385

FIG. 10. Comparison between simulations in the Little Washita watershed for the whole
1997 year with different averaged canopy fraction S␷ : (a) evapotranspiration, (b) total soil
column saturation. The black lines refer to the simulation with s␷ ⫽ 0.89, the gray one with
s␷ ⫽ 0.78.

soil moisture also exerts a slight influence. A compari-
son of soil moisture obtained from simulations with
ESTAR data brings some confirmation of the model
behavior and calls for further investigations in which
remotely sensed data will be assimilated concurrently
(i.e., in parallel) with the model simulations.
The set of simulations C, a yearlong simulation of
streamflow with no additional calibration, shows an
overestimation of some flow peak discharges, giving
however the proper total flow volumes. This simulation
also shows that the vegetation dynamics can have, dur-
ing the simulated period, a small but systematic effect
on the water budget partition and that a correct esti-
mation of evapotranspiration is essential to have a cor-
rect total discharge volume, the most important param-
eter being the transpiration rate. An adjustment of a
controlling parameter was adequate to correct the bud-
get partition. However, using the same parameter for
the entire year (either the first or the second) resulted
in increasingly incorrect average soil moisture contents
with possible increasing departures from actual and
causing increasing errors in base flow estimations. Re-
sults underline the importance of incorporating an ad-
equate description of evapotranspiration processes for
an accurate prediction of long-term discharge and soil
moisture patterns and suggest the value of implement-
ing a dynamic vegetation model.
A fully distributed model predicts throughout the
catchment (and not only at the outlet of the basin) a
larger number of observable processes than traditional
lumped models. However, it also requires a corre-
sponding increase in input data and parameters. Field
measurement campaigns like the First International
Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP)
Field Experiment (FIFE; Sellers et al. 1992), the Pro-
gram for Intercomparison of Land Surface Parameter-
ization Schemes (PILPS; Henderson-Sellers et al.
1993; Wood et al. 1999), the Hydrological Atmospheric
Pilot Experiment-Modelisation du Bilan Hydrique
(HAPEX-MOBILHY; Andre et al. 1988), SGP97 (Jack-
son et al. 1999), Tarrawarra (Western et al. 1998),
Mahurangi River Variability Experiment (MARVEX;
Woods et al. 2001), and other experiments, however, have
already provided integrated data based on combined sat-
ellite, remote sensing, ground-based soil moisture and
vegetation mapping, eddy correlation measurements of
turbulent fluxes, and boundary layer profiling at a hierar-
chy of scales. As digital terrain and remotely sensed sur-
face radiation data of higher resolution and better quality
become increasingly available and computer perfor-
mances continue to increase, physically based, distributed
models such as GEOtop will become increasingly useful
and more easily connected to climate and limited-area
meteorological models, and they may become accepted as
the standard tool for river basin hydrology.
Acknowledgments. This research has been partially
supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Re-
search (MIUR Prin 2003) and by the TIDE fifth frame-
work and AQUATERRA sixth framework European
Projects. We thank the Civil and Environmental Engi-
neering Department of the University of Illinois at Ur-
bana–Champaign and the Illinois Water Sciences Cen-
ter of the U.S. Geological Survey for their hospitality
during the visit of the second author during the course
of this research. Davide Tamanini designed and wrote

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386 JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
the code for the integration of the Richards’ equations.
The Agricultural Research Service, Grazinglands Re-
search Laboratory (ARS-GRL), El Reno, Oklahoma,
provided the Little Washita precipitation data, and the
ARS-GRL, in cooperation with the U.S. Geological
Survey and the Oklahoma Water Resources Board,
provided the Little Washita discharge data.
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