Application of <scp>MIKE SHE</scp> modelling system to set up a detailed water balance computation

Abstract

Abstract Estimation of total water balance is a substantial issue for watershed modelling in order to simulate the major components of the hydrological cycle to determine the stress of different anthropogenic activities on the available water resources within a catchment. In this context, the fully distributed physically based MIKE SHE modelling system was used to simulate the individual hydrological components of the total water balance for the P aya I ndah W etlands ( PIW ) watershed in the west of P eninsular M alaysia. Results reveal that the overall water balance is predominantly controlled by climate variables. Application of the model to the PIW watershed provides detailed estimation of the total water balance for a first‐order catchment in which actual evapotranspiration ( ET ) represents approximately 65 and 58%, while overland flow ( OL ) to the PIW lake system represents 12.38 and 12.3% of the total rainfall during the calibration and validation periods, respectively. The difference of the inflow and outflow was taken as storage in depth. Overall, the model gives a reasonable output of total error of less than 1% of the total rainfall, which in turn indicates that the interaction among components is satisfactorily sustained.