The Canagagigue Creek watershed, located in the Grand River Basin, is one of the fastest developing areas in Ontario. The watershed hydrology has changed considerably due to the increased anthropogenic activities, producing frequent floods and droughts as well as water quality problems. MIKE SHE, a watershed-scale model, was used to simulate surface runoff from the Canagagigue Creek watershed. Various management scenarios affecting the surface hydrology were also evaluated. The model was calibrated for four years (1994-95 to 1997-98) and validated for another four years (1990-91 to 19931-94). For the calibration period, the correlation between the observed and simulated daily runoff was satisfactory, as shown by the coefficient of determination value of 0.59. The coefficient of determination was 0.44 for the validation period. The Nash-Sutcliffe coefficients obtained were 59% and 40% for the calibration and validation period, respectively. Use of daily input data together with a simplistic snowmelt routine, was found to affect model performance during the winter/spring period. Henceforth, model performance can be greatly improved by adopting a more comprehensive method for simulating snowmelt and incorporating the frozen soil conditions. Overall, the model was able to simulate surface runoff reasonably well on annual, seasonal, monthly, and daily intervals, representing all the hydrological components adequately. / With the various management scenarios simulated, it was found that the deforestation scenario considerably increased the total flow (11%). On the other hand, the high runoff peaks were decreased and low flows were increased considerably in the application of the tile drainage scenario. It was also observed that surface flow increased in wet years and decreased in normal and dry years in the climate change scenario. Though impacts of certain scenarios were almost negligible, their effects were significant when associated with the percentage area under transformation. Hence, it was concluded that the model can be used to simulate various management scenarios to solve hydrologic problems in the Southern Ontario climatic condition.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.101157 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Oogathoo, Shalini. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Bioresource Engineering.) |
| Rights | © Shalini Oogathoo, 2006 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002597239, proquestno: AAIMR32766, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds