Four popular conceptual hydrological models, namely Xianjiang model, HBV, TopModel and Sacramento model, were evaluated in this paper in terms of model structure and application performance in the upper reach of the Heihe River Basin, a typical inland river basin in the arid region of West China. This paper begins with theoretical comparisons between the four models from varied aspects including soil profile division, soil moisture content calculation, evapotranspiration estimation, disparity of runoff generation area, runoff generation mechanism, and infiltration mechanism. In combination with their applications in the upper reach of the Huaihe River Basin, the four models were evaluated based on their estimates of soil moisture content, evapotranspiration, runoff process prediction and runoff components. The applications in the Huaihe River Basin show that conceptual hydrological models are good at runoff simulation and incapable of accurate estimation of soil moisture content and evapotranspiration despite. They can only simulate the change trends of these two variables. Among the four, the HBV model is proven best in the case study with better simulation in the water-stress period regardless of a similar overall Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient for runoff simulation, as its model structure explicitly considers the characteristics of a watershed in arid and cold regions.%首先结合新安江模型、TopModel、HBV模型和Sacramento模型机理,从模型结构的土层划分、土壤水分计算、蒸散发计算、产流区不均匀性的考虑、产流机制、下渗机制等多个方面进行了理论上的比较,然后选择黑河流域上游为研究区,结合模拟结果对这四个概念性水文模型在黑河上游山区流域应用情况,从土壤水分、蒸散发、径流过程和各径流组分四个方面进行了分析比较.结果显示,概念性水文模型对黑河干流上游山区径流模拟有较好的模拟效果,但是对土壤水分、蒸散发等水文过程只能描述其变化趋势,难以定量,同时,我们还可以得出在所用四个模型中,HBV模型在黑河干流上游山区出山口的径流拟合中有和其他3个模型相当的Nash-Sutcliffe效率系数,并且在枯水期的表现也好,适用性最好.
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