Comparison of Conceptual Hydrological Models for Lijiang River Basin

【Background and objective】 Hydrological process is a complex phenomenon and affected by many biological and physical processes. Its modelling in water resource management and decision-making in watershed or catchment is often based on conceptual models where the complicated processes that directly or indirectly modulate water flow in different components are highly simplified. Such models are mathematically simple and have been widely used in both practical and scientific communities. Different conceptual hydrological models are available, but how they compare with each other for simulating hydrological processes in watersheds is not well studied. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap. 【Method】 We compared 45 conceptual hydrological models for their application in the Lijiang River Basin. For each model, we simulated daily runoff in the basin from 2008 to 2016 using the same dataset, and compared and analyzed their performance in terms of model structure, calculated evapotranspiration and runoff, from