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Hydrologic and Water Quality System (HAWQS)
Citation:
Hydrologic and Water Quality System (HAWQS).
Impact/Purpose:
HAWQS is designed to facilitate water quality modeling in large scale river basins for policy analysis. The system is designed to significantly reduce the burden of processing large scale data inputs for simulations. The interface also improves the usability of a modeling and reduces processing requirements on the user.
Description:
The Hydrologic and Water Quality System (HAWQS) is a web-based interactive water quantity and quality modeling system that employs as its core modeling engine the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), an internationally-recognized public domain model. HAWQS provides users with interactive web interfaces and maps; pre-loaded input data; outputs that include tables, charts, and raw output data; a user guide, and online development, execution, and storage of a user's modeling projects. HAWQS substantially enhances the usability of SWAT to simulate the effects of management practices based on an extensive array of crops, soils, natural vegetation types, land uses, and climate change scenarios for hydrology and the following water quality parameters: Sediment Pathogens Nutrients Biological oxygen demand Dissolved oxygen Pesticides Water temperature HAWQS users can select from three watershed scales or hydrologic unit codes (HUCS) – 8-digit ~700mi2; 10-digit ~227 mi2; and 12-digit ~40mi2 – to run simulations. HAWQS allows for further aggregation and scalability of daily, monthly, and annual estimates of water quality across large geographic areas up to and including the continental United States.