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APPLICATION OF A FULLY DISTRIBUTED WASHOFF AND TRANSPORT MODEL FOR A GULF COAST WATERSHED
Citation:
TEAGUE, A. E. AND P. BEDIENT. APPLICATION OF A FULLY DISTRIBUTED WASHOFF AND TRANSPORT MODEL FOR A GULF COAST WATERSHED. Presented at Sixth International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology, Houston, TX, June 25 - 29, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
To present at 6th International Conference on Environmental Science and Technolgy
Description:
Advances in hydrologic modeling have been shown to improve the accuracy of rainfall runoff simulation and prediction. Building on the capabilities of distributed hydrologic modeling, a water quality model was developed to simulate buildup, washoff, and advective transport of a conservative pollutant throughout a watershed. Coupled with the physically based VfloTM hydrologic model, the pollutant transport model was used to simulate the washoff and transport of total suspended solids for multiple storm events in the Cypress Creek Watershed, near Houston, Texas. The spatially explicit model output provides greater spatial information on the dynamics of pollutant movement during storm events as well as a greater density of temporal information than current resource limited sampling data. The output of the distributed buildup and washoff model was compared with storm water quality sampling in order to assess the performance of the model. The model output was then analyzed to temporally and spatially characterize the storm events. This effort was the first step in developing a fully distributed water quality model. As such it provides the framework for the incorporation of more sophisticated pollutant dynamics and a spatially explicit evaluation of best management practices and land use change. Thus it is a step towards advancing the use of simulation to developing sustainable and healthy communities.