Application of Conceptual Rainfall-Runoff Model METQ for Simulation of Daily Runoff and Water Level: The case of the Lake Burtnieks Watershed

In this study a conceptual rainfall-runoff METQ model—the latest version METQ2007BDOPT—was applied to simulate the daily runoff and water level of the Lake Burtnieks watershed from 1990 to 1999. The model structure and parameters were basically the same as in the METQ98, with some additional improvements and semi-automatical calibration performance. Model calibration was done for four rivers and one lake gauging station. The results of calibration showed a good correlation between the measured and simulated daily discharges. The Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency R² varied from 0.90 to 0.58 and correlation coefficient r from 0.95 to 0.83. The highest values of R² = 0.90 and r = 0.95 were obtained for the River Salaca and the lowest R² = 0.53 and r = 0.83 for Lake Burtnieks. We observed some relationships between the model parameter values and physiographic characteristic of the sub-catchments.