ABSTRACT
Hydrological models have been widely used to assess the impacts of climate change on water availability at the watershed level. Robust rainfall-runoff simulations provide valuable information for long term and seasonal water availability projections as well as for the management of hydrological extremes such as floods and droughts. In arid and semi-arid environment conditions for hydrological modeling are unfavorable. In Chile, hydrological modeling has been applied to few glaciered catchments at latitudes further south from our study region for which more comprehensive data sets and observations are available. The Upper Hurtado Basin in semi-arid central Chile combines four interesting challenges for hydrological modeling in particular and for water resources management in general: snow-driven mountainous river basin, semi-arid climate, high spatial heterogeneity, and data-scarcity. In order to accurately represent hydrological-related snow processes and reduce uncertainty, good quality monitored data is required.
