Development of Comprehensive Karstic Watershed Model in Order to Estimate and Precise the Components of the Water Balance

The various semi-distributed and distributed hydrological models have a very high potential for comprehensive water catchment simulation, but these models still need to be developed in order to get closer to the actual conditions of the catchment areas. To simulate the karstic basins using conventional hydrologic models, changes in model codes are required. The SWAT model, due to openness and freedom, has made it possible to implement and configure various conditions in the catchment area. In this research, a new model called SWAT-ML has been developed in which karst regions have different hydrological characteristics. The studied area is a karstic basin of Maharlu Lake and statistical simulation period from 1980 to 2013 for calibration and validation of surface runoff, base flow, agricultural production and actual evapotranspiration. The model was calibrated with an average of determination factor and Nash Sutcliff of 0.65, and it was found that the SWAT model has a great potential for estimating the yields of agricultural products. The developed model showed that in karstic watershed simulation, performance is better than SWAT model, and the calculated balance values by SWAT and SWAT-ML model, has a significant difference compared to hydro climatology budget.