LONG-TERM FLOW SIMULATION IN BARLAD RIVER BASIN USING ROMANIAN HYDROLOGICAL MODEL CONSUL

The paper presents the preparation of the Romanian hydrological software CONSUL for long term hydrological simulation needs for assessment of climate change impact in extreme events. CONSUL model is a conceptual model based on semi-distributed parameters depending on the physical characteristics of the river basin. According to the schematic representation (physiographic modelling) of how water flows and collects in a river basin the model computes the discharge hydrographs on sub-basins and then performs their routing and composition on the main river and tributaries. The initial values of the model parameters corresponding to some of the model structures was estimated by the generalized relationships of those parameters in function of the morphometric characteristics of the river basin or of the river reaches. These relationships on obtain on the basis of the recorded data at the hydrometric stations using the major rainfall-runoff events. CONSUL model was calibrated (i) individual (based on the 25 rainfall-runoff events) for the simulation of the largest floods occurred during the period 1975-2010 in the Barlad River Basin, Romania and (ii) globally, by continuous flow simulation from the period 1984-1988. Using the calibrated parameters the model validation was made also by flow simulation (at 6 hours time step) during the years 2006 and 2010. Average precipitation and air temperature (hydrological model input data) for each sub-basin was performed using a pre-processing program of meteorological data from original rectangular grid nodes corresponding to Barlad River Basin, averaging being achieved as weighted values based on the representativeness of these nodes for each analyzed sub-basin. The flow simulation results with the CONSUL model in the Barlad River Basin, during both the calibration and validation periods, showed that the model is robust and can been applied successfully for long-term flow simulation in modified climate conditions.