Mapping and regionalization in hydrology relates to the issue of inferring continuous or high resolution predictions of hydrological variables and parameters for larger regions based on point observations. The generation of continuous maps of hydrological variables and parameters is strongly related to the problem of Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB) and have a range of important applications:
- Background for validation of climatic models
- Validation of regional hydrological models
- Input to local hydrological models
- Tool in water resources management
Despite the continuous nature of hydrological variables, we mainly have observations referring to point locations, such as stream gauges. We will in this session focus on methods and applications that map or regionalize hydrological variables and model parameters from the local scale to larger scale. We also see papers focusing on challenges within up- or downscaling related to regionalization as a part of this topic.
One branch of methods that traditionally has been linked to mapping and regionalization is spatial interpolation methods (geostatistical methods, objective methods, empirical orthogonal functions). These have typically been developed for processes having a natural point support, whereas observations of many of the hydrological variables are subject to spatial and/or temporal filtering which complicates the formulation of the spatial interpolation methods. Novel methods addressing these issues are of particular interest.
We would also like to have contributions based on physical processes and the use of physically based models. Whereas such methods have been applied to a lesser degree within mapping and regionalization, distributed models and computation power has made this possible.
Seeing these two directions as counterparts, we will of course also welcome papers that combine or compare the different method.