Comparison of the Performance of MISDc and HBV Hydrological Models in Runoff Simulation of Kakareza Basin in Lorestan Province

Hydrological models are useful tools in hydrological researches, testing research hypotheses and understanding hydrological processes, designing, evaluating and allocating water resources (flood plain assessment and ecosystem conservation). Hydrology models are simplified representations of the actual hydrology system and help to study the function of the basin in response to various inputs and to better understand hydrological processes. Due to the variety of hydrological models, it is difficult to choose a model. Therefore, comparative evaluation of models is needed to determine the capability of models in the study area. In this study, MISDc and HBV semi distributed models are used to simulate the flow of Kakareza watershed. For this instance a 9 year simulation period (2002-2010) was selected. The accuracy of model performance was evaluated using Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) and the coefficient of determination (R2) criterion. The Nash-Sutcliffe values and coefficient of determination for MISDc model were 0.83 and 0.84, for HBV model, 0.79 and 0.80 for 2002-2008 calibration period respectively and for MISDc model, it was 0.88 and 0.89, and for the HBV model, it is 0.72 and 0.73, for the 2009-2010 validation period, which indicates the better performance of the MISDc model in daily flow simulation in the study area. The results show that the MISDc model has performed better than the HBV model and it is suggested to use this model in hydrological studies of the region.