Surface Water Models Forth River Catchment
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DPIW – SURFACE WATER MODELS FORTH RIVER CATCHMENT Forth River Surface Water Model Hydro Tasmania Version No: 1.1 DOCUMENT INFORMATION JOB/PROJECT TITLE Surface Water Hydrological Models for DPIW CLIENT ORGANISATION Department of Primary Industries and Water CLIENT CONTACT Bryce Graham DOCUMENT ID NUMBER WR 2007/019 JOB/PROJECT MANAGER Mark Willis JOB/PROJECT NUMBER E200690/P202167 Document History and Status Revision Prepared Reviewed Approved Date Revision by by by approved type 1.0 Mark Willis Fiona Ling C. Smythe July 2007 Final 1.1 Mark Willis Fiona Ling C. Smythe July 2008 Final Current Document Approval PREPARED BY Mark Willis Water Resources Mngt Sign Date REVIEWED BY Dr Fiona Ling Water Resources Mngt Sign Date APPROVED FOR Crispin Smythe SUBMISSION Water Resources Mngt Sign Date Current Document Distribution List Organisation Date Issued To DPIW July 2008 Bryce Graham The concepts and information contained in this document are the property of Hydro Tasmania. This document may only be used for the purposes of assessing our offer of services and for inclusion in documentation for the engagement of Hydro Tasmania. Use or copying of this document in whole or in part for any other purpose without the written permission of Hydro Tasmania constitutes an infringement of copyright. i Forth River Surface Water Model Hydro Tasmania Version No: 1.1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report is part of a series of reports which present the methodologies and results from the development and calibration of surface water hydrological models for 26 catchments under both current and natural flow conditions. This report describes the results of the hydrological model developed for the Forth River catchment. A model was developed for the Forth River catchment that facilitates the modelling of flow data for three scenarios: • Scenario 1 – No entitlements (Natural Flow); • Scenario 2 – with Entitlements (with water entitlements extracted); • Scenario 3 - Environmental Flows and Entitlements (Water entitlements extracted, however low priority entitlements are limited by an environmental flow threshold). The results from the scenario modelling allow the calculation of indices of hydrological disturbance. These indices include: • Index of Mean Annual Flow • Index of Flow Duration Curve Difference • Index of Seasonal Amplitude • Index of Seasonal Periodicity • Hydrological Disturbance Index The indices were calculated using the formulas stated in the Natural Resource Management (NRM) Monitoring and Evaluation Framework developed by SKM for the Murray-Darling Basin (MDBC 08/04). A user interface is also provided that allows the user to run the model under varying catchment demand scenarios. This allows the user to add further extractions to catchments and see what effect these additional extractions have on the available water in the catchment of concern. The interface provides sub-catchment summary of flow statistics, duration curves, hydrological indices and water entitlements data. For information on the use of the user interface refer to the Operating Manual for the NAP Region Hydrological Models (Hydro Tasmania 2004). ii Forth River Surface Water Model Hydro Tasmania Version No: 1.1 CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ii 1. INTRODUCTION 1 2. CATCHMENT CHARACTERISTICS 2 3. DATA COMPILATION 4 3.1 Climate data (Rainfall & Evaporation) 4 3.2 Advantages of using climate DRILL data 4 3.3 Transposition of climate DRILL data to local catchment 5 3.4 Comparison of Data Drill rainfall and site gauges 7 3.5 Streamflow data 8 3.6 Irrigation and water usage 9 3.7 Estimation of unlicensed dams 15 3.8 Environmental flows 16 4. MODEL DEVELOPMENT 18 4.1 Sub-catchment delination 18 4.2 Hydstra Model 18 4.2.1 Hydro Tasmania Lakes 20 4.2.2 Lemonthyme Power Station and Wilmot Power Stations 21 4.3 AWBM Model 22 4.3.1 Channel Routing 25 4.4 Model Calibration 25 4.4.1 Factors affecting the reliability of the model calibration. 32 4.4.2 Model Accuracy - Model Fit Statistics 33 4.4.3 Model accuracy across the catchment 36 4.5 Model results 38 4.5.1 Indices of hydrological disturbance 39 4.6 Flood frequency analysis 40 5. REFERENCES 41 5.1 Personal Communications 41 6. GLOSSARY 42 APPENDIX A 44 iii Forth River Surface Water Model Hydro Tasmania Version No: 1.1 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2-1 Sub-catchment boundaries 3 Figure 3-1 Climate Drill Site Locations 6 Figure 3-2 Rainfall and Data Drill Comparisons 8 Figure 3-3 Water Allocations 14 Figure 4-1 Hydstra Model Schematic 19 Figure 4-2 Australian Water Balance Model Schematic 24 Figure 4-3 Monthly Variation of CapAve Parameter 28 Figure 4-4 Daily time series (ML/d) – Forth River - Good fit. 29 Figure 4-5 Daily time series comparison (ML/d) – Forth River – Good fit. 29 Figure 4-6 Daily time series comparison (ML/d) – Forth River – Good fit. 30 Figure 4-7 Monthly time series comparison – volume (ML) 30 Figure 4-8 Long term average monthly, seasonal and annual comparison plot 31 Figure 4-9 Duration Curve – Daily flow percentage difference 35 Figure 4-10 Duration Curve – Monthly volume percentage difference 35 Figure 4-11 Time Series of Monthly Volumes- Site 450 37 Figure 4-12 Time Series of Monthly Volumes- Site 815 37 Figure 4-13 Daily Duration Curve 38 Figure A-1 Forth catchment – monthly volumes at secondary site. 46 Figure A-2 George catchment – monthly volumes at secondary site. 46 Figure A-3 Leven catchment – monthly volumes at secondary site. 47 Figure A-4 Swan catchment – monthly volumes at secondary site. 47 Figure A-5 Montagu catchment – monthly volumes at secondary site. 48 iv Forth River Surface Water Model Hydro Tasmania Version No: 1.1 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 Data Drill Site Locations 7 Table 3.2 Potential calibration sites 9 Table 3.3 Assumed Surety of Unassigned Records 10 Table 3.4 Unlicensed extractions 11 Table 3.5 Sub Catchment High and Low Priority Entitlements 11 Table 3.6 Average capacity for dams less than 20 ML by Neal et al (2002) 16 Table 3.7 Environmental Flows 17 Table 4.1 Hydro Tasmania Lakes - assumed downstream flow 21 Table 4.2 Power Station inter-catchment transfer 22 Table 4.3 Adopted Calibration Parameters 27 Table 4.4 Long term average monthly, seasonal and annual comparisons 31 Table 4.5 Model Fit Statistics 33 2 Table 4.6 R Fit Description 34 Table 4.7 Hydrological Disturbance Indices 39 Table A-1 Model performance at secondary sites 49 v Forth River Surface Water Model Hydro Tasmania Version No: 1.1 1. INTRODUCTION This report forms part of a larger project commissioned by the Department of Primary Industries and Water (DPIW) to provide hydrological models for 26 regional catchments. The main objectives for the individual catchments are: • To compile relevant data required for the development and calibration of the hydrological model (Australian Water Balance Model, AWBM) for the Forth River catchment; • To source over 100 years of daily time-step rainfall and streamflow data for input to the hydrologic model; • To develop and calibrate the hydrologic model under both natural and current catchment conditions; • To develop a User Interface for running the model under varying catchment demand scenarios; • Prepare a report summarising the methodology adopted, assumptions made, results of calibration and validation and description relating to the use of the developed hydrologic model and associated software. 1 Forth River Surface Water Model Hydro Tasmania Version No: 1.1 2. CATCHMENT CHARACTERISTICS The Forth River catchment is located in North West Tasmania. It has a catchment area of 1119.8 km 2 and discharges into Bass Strait at Turner’s Beach. The headwaters of the catchment start in the Cradle Mountain and Lake St Clair National Park are fed by runoff from Tasmania’s highest peaks such Mt Ossa (1617m AHD) and Mt Pelion West (1560m AHD). This portion of the catchment is virtually unpopulated except for the tourist settlement at Cradle Valley and the landscape is typical alpine and eucalypt vegetation. The middle parts of the catchment are highly modified due to the control of the flow for hydro-electric generation activities. Infrastructure owned and operated by Hydro Tasmania within this catchment include; Lemonthyme Power Station, Lake Cethana, Cethana Power Station, Lake Barrington, Devils Gate Power Station, Lake Gairdner, Wilmot Power Station, Lake Paloona and Paloona Power Station. Flow through the Lemonthyme Power Station is via an inter-catchment water transfer from the Mersey River. The vegetation in the middle catchments is dominated by Eucalypt forests. The lower part of the catchment consists of a mixture of agriculture and smaller (life style) residential allotments, including the township of Forth. Variability in the annual rainfall total across this catchment is significant, mainly due to the changes in elevation and the varied exposure to the dominant westerly weather pattern. The lower catchment around Forth receives a typical annual rainfall of around 1000mm and the upper catchment around Cradle Valley around 2800mm. There are 283 registered (current) entitlements for water extraction registered on the Water Information Management System (WIMS Dec 2006). Most of these extractions are concentrated in the lower sub-catchments and mainly relate to agriculture. The largest extraction entitlement is 4845 ML associated with the Cradle Coast water supply. As expected most of the upper sub-catchments have few or no registered WIMS entitlements as this is unpopulated and utilised either for electricity generation or contained within a national park. For modelling purposes, the Forth