Soil and Water Assessment Tool Model Calibration Results for Different Catchment Sizes in Poland

The watershed model SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) can be used to implement the requirements of international agreements that Poland has ratified. Among these requirements are the establishment of catchment-based, rather than administrative-based, management plans and spatial information systems. Furthermore, Polish law requires that management of water resources be based on catchment systems. This article explores the use of the SWAT model in the implementation of catchment-based water management in Poland. Specifically, the impacts of basin size on calibration and on the results of the simulation process were analyzed. SWAT was set up and calibrated for three Polish watersheds of varying sizes: (i) Gasawka, a small basin (>593.7 km(2)), (ii) Rega, a medium-sized basin (2766.8 km(2)), and (iii) Warta, a large basin (54,500 km(2)) representing about 17.4% of Polish territory. The results indicated that the size of the catchment has an impact on the calibration process and simulation outputs. Several factors influenced by the size of the catchment affected the modeling results. Among these factors are the number of measurement points within the basin and the length of the measuring period and data quality at checkpoints as determined by the position of the measuring station. It was concluded that the SWAT model is a suitable tool for the implementation of catchment-based water management in Poland regardless of watershed size.