Hydrological Prediction in Ungauged Basins

PUB (Prediction in Ungaged Basins) is one of recent focus of water resources management research. In the biggest developing country of the world, Chinese hydrologists have to face this difficult condition: Many basins in China are ungauged, at least are imperfect gauged. In this paper major achievements of Chinese researches on PUB are summarized, and some unit hydrograph and inferential formulae in different areas are given first. It is pointed out that modern hydrology should fully use new systematic theory and method, rely on computer technology and remote sensing means, and look for a new outlet in the direction of numerical simulation for PUB. The article proposes that the research should base on data-abundant basin to build mathematic model and then explore the model to ungauged basins. To identify the suitability and precision of a hydrology model, some measured data should be concealed randomly or intentionally to check the precision of the model. At last, some new theories and techniques used for simulating the ungauged basins are appraised, such as distribution hydrological model, remote sense, and four-dimensional data assimilation system. And some thoughts on hydrological study in the ungauged basins are put forward.