Improving water quality forecasting via data assimilation - Application of maximum likelihood ensemble filter to HSPF

- An ensemble data assimilation procedure is developed for water quality forecasting.
- The DA procedure uses the maximum likelihood ensemble filter (MLEF).
- The DA is applied to HSPF, updating more than five main water quality variables.
- A bias correction procedure is incorporated into the observation equation.
- The DA procedure substantially improves predictive skill for most variables.

SummaryAn ensemble data assimilation (DA) procedure is developed and evaluated for the Hydrologic Simulation Program - Fortran (HSPF), a widely used watershed water quality model. The procedure aims at improving the accuracy of short-range water quality prediction by updating the model initial conditions (IC) based on real-time observations of hydrologic and water quality variables. The observations assimilated include streamflow, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), dissolved oxygen (DO), chlorophyll a (CHL-a), nitrate (NO3), phosphate (PO4) and water temperature (TW). The DA procedure uses the maximum likelihood ensemble filter (MLEF), which is capable of handling both nonlinear model dynamics and nonlinear observation equations, in a fixed-lag smoother formulation. For evaluation, the DA procedure was applied to the Kumho Catchment of the Nakdong River Basin in the Republic of Korea. A set of performance measures was used to evaluate analysis and prediction of streamflow and water quality variables. To remove systematic errors in the model simulation originating from structural and parametric errors, a parsimonious bias correction procedure is incorporated into the observation equation. The results show that the DA procedure substantially improves predictive skill for most variables; reduction in root mean square error ranges from 11% to 60% for Day-1 through 3 predictions for all observed variables except DO. It is seen that MLEF handles highly nonlinear hydrologic and biochemical observation equations very well, and that it is an effective DA technique for water quality forecasting.