APPLICATION OF A GROUPED RESPONSE UNIT HYDROLOGICAL MODEL TO A NORTHERN WETLAND REGION

Applications of hydrological models to northern wetland‐dominated regions have been limited in the past to a few case studies on small basins employing ‘lumped’ models. Only recently have there been attempts to apply the grouped response unit (GRU) distributed modelling approach using terrain classifications to these same basins. This study summarizes recent efforts in applying such a model. For the purposes of implementing the GRU approach, terrain types that are hydrologically significant and characteristic to the wetland‐dominated regime were successfully discriminated using a principal component analysis and a hybrid unsupervised/supervised classification technique on Landsat–Thematic Mapper imagery. The terrain classifications were then used as input into a distributed hydrological model for calibration and validation using recorded spring runoff events. Preliminary model applications and results are described. Calibration to a historic spring runoff event yielded an r2 value of 0.86. Model validation, however, yielded much poorer results. The problems of model applicability to this region and limitations of sparse data networks are highlighted. The need for more field research in this type of hydrological regime, and associated improvements to the model parameter set are also identified.