Entropy-Based Temporal Downscaling of Precipitation as Tool for Sediment Delivery Ratio Assessment

Many regions around the globe are subjected to precipitation-data scarcity that often hinders the capacity of hydrological modeling. The entropy theory and the principle of maximum entropy can help hydrologists to extract useful information from the scarce data available. In this work, we propose a new method to assess sub-daily precipitation features such as duration and intensity based on daily precipitation using the principle of maximum entropy. Particularly in arid and semiarid regions, such sub-daily features are of central importance for modeling sediment transport and deposition. The obtained features were used as input to the SYPoME model (sediment yield using the principle of maximum entropy). The combined method was implemented in seven catchments in Northeast Brazil with drainage areas ranging from 10(−3) to 10(+2) km(2) in assessing sediment yield and delivery ratio. The results show significant improvement when compared with conventional deterministic modeling, with Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.96 and absolute error of 21% for our method against NSE of −4.49 and absolute error of 105% for the deterministic approach.