Enhanced watershed modeling and data analysis with a fully coupled hydrologic model and cloud-based flow analysis

2014 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.In today's world of increased water demand in the face of population growth and climate change, there are no simple answers. For this reason many municipalities, water resource engineers, and federal analyses turn to modeling watersheds for a better understanding of the possible outcomes of their water management actions. The physical processes that govern movement and transport of water and constituents are typically highly nonlinear. Therefore, improper characterization of a complex, integrated, processes like surface-subsurface water interaction can substantially impact water management decisions that are made based on existing models. Historically there have been numerous tools and watershed models developed to analyze watersheds or their constituent components of rainfall, run-off, irrigation, nutrients, and stream flow. However, due to the complexity of real watershed systems, many models have specialized at analyzing only a portion of watershed processes like surface flow, subsurface flow, or simply analyzing local monitoring data rather than modeling the system. As a result many models are unable to accurately represent complex systems in which surface and subsurface processes are both important. Two popular watershed models have been used extensively to represent surface processes, SWAT (Arnold et al, 1998), and subsurface processes, MODFLOW (Harbaugh, 2005). The lack of comprehensive watershed simulation has led to a rise in uncertainty for managing water resources in complex surface-subsurface driven watersheds. For this reason, there have been multiple attempts to couple the SWAT and MODFLOW models for a more comprehensive watershed simulation (Perkins and Sophocleous, 1999; Menking, 2003; Galbiati et al., 2006; Kim et al., 2008); however, the previous couplings are typically monthly couplings with spatial restrictions for the two models. Additionally, most of these coupled SWAT-MODFLOW models are unavailable to the general public, unlike the constituent SWAT and MODFLOW models which are available. Furthermore, many of these couplings depend on a forced equal spatial discretization for computational units. This requires that one MODFLOW grid cell is the same size and location of one SWAT hydrologic response unit (HRU). Additionally, many of the previous couplings are based on a loose monthly average coupling which might be insufficient in natural spring and irrigated agricultural driven groundwater systems which can fluctuate on a sub-monthly time scale. The primary goal of this work is to enhance the capacity for modeling watershed processes by fully coupling surface and subsurface hydrologic processes at a daily time step. The specific objectives of this work are 1) to examine and create a general spatial linkage between SWAT and MODFLOW allowing the use of spatially-different existing models for coupling; 2) to examine existing practices and address current weaknesses for coupling of the SWAT and MODFLOW models to develop an integrated modeling system; 3) to demonstrate the capacity of the enhanced model compared to the original SWAT and MODFLOW models on the North Fork of the Sprague River in the Upper Klamath Basin in Oregon. The resulting generalized daily coupling between a spatially dis-similar SWAT and MODFLOW model on the North Fork of the Sprague River has resulted in a slightly more lower representation of monthly stream flow (monthly R2 = 0.66, NS = 0.38) than the original SWAT model (monthly R2 = 0.60, NS = 0.57) with no additional calibration. The Log10 results of stream flow illustrate an even greater improvement between SWAT-MODFLOW correlation (R2) but not the overall simulation (NS) (monthly R2 = 0.74, NS = -0.29) compared to the original SWAT (monthly R2 = 0.63, NS = 0.63) correlation (R2). With an improved water table representation, these SWAT-MODFLOW simulation results illustrate a more in depth representation of overall stream flows on a groundwater influenced tributary of the Sprague River than the original SWAT model. Additionally, with the increased complexity of environmental models there is a need to design and implement tools that are more accessible and computationally scalable; otherwise their use will remain limited to those that developed them. In light of advancements in cloud-computing technology a better implementation of modern desktop software packages would be the use of scalable cloud-based cyberinfrastructure, or cloud-based environmental modeling services. Cloud-based deployment of water data and modeling tools assist in a scalable as well as platform independent analysis; meaning a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smart phone can perform the same analyses. To utilize recent advancements in computer technology, a further focus of this work is to develop and demonstrate a scalable cloud-computing web-tool that facilitates access and analysis of stream flow data. The specific objectives are to 1) unify the various stream flow analysis topics into a single tool; 2) to assist in the access to data and inputs for current flow analysis methods; 3) to examine the scalability benefits of a cloud-based flow analysis tool. Furthermore, the new Comprehensive Flow Analysis tool successfully combined time-series statistics, flood analysis, base-flow separation, drought analysis, duration curve analysis, and load estimation into a single web-based tool. Preliminary and secondary scalability testing has revealed that the CFA analyses are scalable in a cloud-based cyberinfrastructure environment to a request rate that is likely unrealistic for web tools

Colorado water, December 2000

The scope of the newsletter is devoted to enhancing communication between Colorado water users and managers and faculty at the research universities in the state.Newsletter of the Water Center at Colorado State University

MODELING OF HYDROLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESSES THROUGH OPENMI AND WEB SERVICES

Integrated collaborative modeling has been proven lately to be the most accurate computer methodology that allows modelers to scrutinize the environmental processes using a holistic approach. Due to the dynamic and interdependent nature, such processes involve the interlinking of hydrological, meteorological, environmental, ecosystems and socioeconomical characteristics. In this paper we deal with the development and the integration of a collaborative system of models devoted to the water quantity and quality monitoring, and also to the management of water resources in a watershed. The system is also tailored by a socio-economical study that highlights the impact of the aforementioned management to the local community of the region under study. Models that integrate the collaborative system need to be coupled so that to run simultaneously under the spatial and temporal synchronization condition. To achieve such a simultaneous synchronization, the Open Modeling Interface, (OpenMI) is invoked. The system has been applied and tested to the Lake Karla watershed in Thessaly region, Greece. However due to the loose integration methodology used for its development and to its open ended property, the system can be easily parametrized to offer such an analysis on other similar case studies. An extension to the OpenMI standard provides the remote simultaneous run of models using web services and allowing the development of a cloud repository of models for future use

Integrated Hydrological Modeling for Water Resources Management of Heeia Coastal Wetland in Hawaii.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017

A framework for parameter estimation using sharp-interface seawater intrusion models

Funding : This work was supported by Quebec’s Ministère de l'Environnement et de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques (MELCC) [project « Acquisition de connaissances sur les eaux souterraines dans la région des Îles-de-la-Madeleine » (Groundwater characterization project in the Magdalen Islands region)]; and the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FRQNT) [International internship program accessed through CentrEau, the Quebec Water Research Center]. The authors would like to thank the Municipality of Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine for providing pumping datasets and information on current and historical groundwater management. They would also like to thank the team at Université Laval working on the Magdalen Islands project, for their help acquiring datasets and for field logistics, John Molson, for proofreading, and finally the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. The authors would also like to thank Vincent Post for discussions on deep open boreholes, and Francesca Lotti and John Doherty for discussions on seawater intrusion modeling and data assimilation. J-C Comte and O Banton acknowledge the financial support from the Fonds d'Action Québécois pour le Développement Durable for the ERT data collection, undertaken as part of the Madelin'Eau consortium (Ageos-Enviro'Puits-Hydriad), and further thank the Municipality of Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine for fieldwork logistical and technical support.Peer reviewedproo

FORECASTING CLIMATE AND LAND USE CHANGE IMPACTS ON ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN HAWAIʻI THROUGH INTEGRATION OF HYDROLOGICAL AND PARTICIPATORY MODELS

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Real-time Management of groundwater resource based on wireless sensor networks

Groundwater plays a vital role in the arid inland river basins, in which the groundwater management is critical to the sustainable development of area economy and ecology. Traditional sustainable management approaches are to analyze different scenarios subject to assumptions or to construct simulation–optimization models to obtain optimal strategy. However, groundwater system is time-varying due to exogenous inputs. In this sense, the groundwater management based on static data is relatively outdated. As part of the Heihe River Basin (HRB), which is a typical arid river basin in Northwestern China, the Daman irrigation district was selected as the study area in this paper. First, a simulation–optimization model was constructed to optimize the pumping rates of the study area according to the groundwater level constraints. Three different groundwater level constraints were assigned to explore sustainable strategies for groundwater resources. The results indicated that the simulation–optimization model was capable of identifying the optimal pumping yields and satisfy the given constraints. Second, the simulation–optimization model was integrated with wireless sensors network (WSN) technology to provide real-time features for the management. The results showed time-varying feature for the groundwater management, which was capable of updating observations, constraints, and decision variables in real time. Furthermore, a web-based platform was developed to facilitate the decision-making process. This study combined simulation and optimization model with WSN techniques and meanwhile attempted to real-time monitor and manage the scarce groundwater resource, which could be used to support the decision-making related to sustainable management

FROM RECHARGE TO REEF: ASSESSING THE SOURCES, QUANTITY, AND TRANSPORT OF GROUNDWATER ON TUTUILA ISLAND, AMERICAN SAMOA

Ph.D.Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 201

Colorado water, April 2001

The scope of the newsletter is devoted to enhancing communication between Colorado water users and managers and faculty at the research universities in the state.Newsletter of the Water Center at Colorado State University