Development and Testing of a Water Management Model (Watrcom): Field Testing

BSTRACT Water table observations from the 1000 ha watershed of Mitchell Creek near Tarboro, NC, were used to field test the water management model, WATRCOM. Soil properties and channel boundary conditions from three sections of the watershed along with weather data from years 1983 and 1984 were used to simulate the hydrology of the area with and without channel water level control. Six transects containing 27 water table observation wells were selected for testing. All simulations were based on measured field parameters and no calibration simulations were made to optimize parameters to fit observed data. A total of 14,000 daily water table observations were compared with simulated data. The root mean square error in simulated water tables at each well ranged from 0.05 to 0.24 m. When the data were pooled by section, the root mean square error ranged from 0.10 to 0.17 m.