Performance of the physically-based Sparse Gash model for estimating rainfall interception of the Hyrcanian broad-leaved forests

The difficulties in the measurement of rainfall interception in forests confirm the necessity of presenting models. The widely used models for estimating rainfall interception are physical-based models, among which the Sparse Gash is the most commonly used. We evaluated the Sparse Gash model for estimating the rainfall interception of five forest stands (two chestnut-leaved oak stands, two oriental beech stands, and one velvet maple stand) in the Hyrcanian region. In each stand, the gross rainfall and throughfall were measured using 5 and 20 rainfall collectors, respectively, and rainfall interception was calculated by subtracting the throughfall from gross rainfall. To evaluate the performance of the model, we used statistical metrics: Error percentage (Error), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and the Model Efficiency coefficient (CE). Based on the Pearson correlation coefficient, the correlation between the values estimated by the model and the observed values was statistically significant at a 95% confidence interval. In all forests, the values of the CE were higher than 0.5, indicating the appropriate efficiency of the model. Based on the Error, the model showed good capability in estimating the rainfall interception of four forest stands (i.e., oriental beech in Lajim, chestnut-leaved oak in Kohmiyan and Sari, and velvet maple in Sari Error metric were found to be -10.3%, +12.7%, +10.8%, and +15.4%, respectively). Studying the performance of physically-based models in forests with different species and different allometric, climatic and rainfall characteristics completes the information gap about the efficiency of models to estimate rainfall interception.