fuse 3.2: an R package implementing the Framework for Understanding Structural Errors

Note: This release corresponds to the version reviewed and published in JOSS.

The Framework for Understanding Structural Errors (FUSE) was developed by Clark et al. (2008) and is a state-of-the-art modelling toolbox. It includes 1248 hydrological model structures, amongst which some well established models for rainfall-runoff simulations (i.e. PRMS, SACRAMENTO, TOPMODEL and ARNO/VIC, also defined as parent models). Each model is characterised by a different architecture of the upper and lower soil layers and parameterisation of processes such as: evaporation, vertical percolation, interflow, base flow and surface runoff.

Fuse takes as input rainfall and potential evapotranspiration time series (areal averages over the river catchment area) and returns a simulated time series of river discharges. It can be used to understand the variability of expected hydrological responses based on model structures.

This package is a re-implementation of the framework described in Clark et al. (2008) and based on the Fortran code provided by M. Clark in 2011. The package consists of two modules: Soil Moisture Accounting module (fusesma.sim) and Gamma routing module (fuserouting.sim). It also contains default parameter ranges (fusesma.ranges and fuserouting.ranges) and three data objects: fuse_hydrological_timeseries (sample input dataset), parameters (sample parameters) and modlist (list of FUSE model structures).