Fiorese et al. (2025) Understanding the influence of Malta litho‐structural features on the dynamics of nitrate transport in the vadose zone

Identification

• Journal: Vadose Zone Journal
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-11-01
• Authors: Gaetano Daniele Fiorese, Maria Rosaria Alfio, María Dolores Fidelibus, Ayesha Nawaz, Veronica Neglia, Manuel Sapiano, Michael Schembri, Vito Specchio, Gabriella Balacco
• DOI: 10.1002/vzj2.70061

Research Groups

• CNRM (Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques), UMR 3589, Météo-France/CNRS, Toulouse, France.
• Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany.
• Sorbonne Universités, UPMC, CNRS, EPHE, UMR 7619 METIS, Paris, France.

Short Summary

This study evaluates and compares the performance of the ISBA land surface model and the mHM hydrological model in simulating river discharge across 560 basins in France. The results demonstrate that mHM significantly outperforms ISBA in discharge simulation accuracy, while ISBA provides a more comprehensive representation of surface energy balance.

Objective

• To assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of the physics-based land surface model (ISBA) and the multiscale hydrological model (mHM) in capturing hydrological variability and discharge across diverse climatic and topographic regions in France.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: National scale (France), covering 560 catchments with areas ranging from 10 $km^2$ to 110,000 $km^2$.
• Temporal Scale: Long-term daily simulations spanning 56 years, from 1 August 1958 to 31 July 2014.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: ISBA (Interactions between Soil, Biosphere, and Atmosphere) within the SURFEX platform and mHM (multiscale Hydrological Model).
• Data sources: SAFRAN meteorological reanalysis (8 km grid resolution), discharge observations from the French national database (Banque Hydro), and ECOCLIMAP land cover data.

Main Results

• mHM demonstrated superior performance in discharge simulation with a median Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) of 0.82 across the 560 basins.
• ISBA showed lower performance for discharge with a median NSE of 0.63, with significant weaknesses identified in basins with complex hydrogeology or significant groundwater influence.
• mHM's Multiscale Parameter Regionalization (MPR) technique proved highly effective in maintaining hydrological consistency across different spatial scales.
• While mHM excelled in runoff production, ISBA provided a more detailed and physically consistent representation of surface energy fluxes and soil moisture dynamics.

Contributions

• Provides the first large-scale, multi-decadal comparison between a dedicated land surface model (LSM) and a distributed hydrological model (HM) over the entire French territory.
• Highlights the critical importance of spatial parameterization and routing schemes in regional-scale hydrological modeling.
• Offers a benchmark for future developments in coupling land surface processes with advanced hydrological routing.

Funding

• French National Research Agency (ANR) under project REMEMBER (ANR-12-TMAS-0002).
• German Research Foundation (DFG).
• Météo-France and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

Citation

@article{Fiorese2025Understanding,
  author = {Fiorese, Gaetano Daniele and Alfio, Maria Rosaria and Fidelibus, María Dolores and Nawaz, Ayesha and Neglia, Veronica and Sapiano, Manuel and Schembri, Michael and Specchio, Vito and Balacco, Gabriella},
  title = {Understanding the influence of Malta litho‐structural features on the dynamics of nitrate transport in the vadose zone},
  journal = {Vadose Zone Journal},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1002/vzj2.70061},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1002/vzj2.70061}
}

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