Enhancing hydrological model calibration through hybrid strategies in data‐scarce regions

Abstract Calibration of a hydrological model is a challenging task, especially in basins that are data scarce. With the incorporation of regional information and integration with satellite data, the parameters of hydrological models can be estimated for a basin with scant or no discharge records. The main objective of this study is to calibrate and validate a hydrological model based on a limited amount of in‐situ measured and remote sensing satellite datasets in a data‐sparse region. Multiple techniques were applied for the model calibration: (1) stage‐discharge curves using a spatial proximity approach, (2) Simplified Surface Energy Balance actual evapotranspiration, (3) river discharge using a physical similarity regionalization approach, and (4) a new hybrid approach by integrating remote sensing datasets along with field measured river bathymetry data to estimate the river discharge. To demonstrate the methodology, we employed the widely used Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) hydrological model in Manipur River Basin, India. The sensitivity, calibration, and validation of the SWAT model were carried out by using the Sequential Uncertainty Fitting Technique. During calibration, the coefficient of determination (R 2 ) and the Kling Gupta Efficiency (KGE) were found to be in the range of 0.46–0.81 and 0.41–0.83, whereas during validation R 2 and KGE were found to be in the range of 0.40–0.79 and 0.53–0.77 for the four different techniques. Among all the four techniques applied in this study, calibration based on (i) stage‐discharge curve using spatial proximity approach and (ii) new hybrid approach by integrating remote sensing datasets and river bathymetry were found as the better approaches as indicated by the statistical indices. The performance evaluation of the model through a new hybrid approach by integrating remote sensing and in‐situ measured datasets for rivers with narrow width represents a promising technique for use in a data sparse region.