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AGWA DESIGN DOCUMENTATION: MIGRATING TO ARCGIS AND THE INTERNET
Citation:
CATE, A. J., D. J. SEMMENS, I. S. BURNS, D. C. GOODRICH, AND W. G. KEPNER. AGWA DESIGN DOCUMENTATION: MIGRATING TO ARCGIS AND THE INTERNET. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-05/056 (NTIS PB2006-100571), 2005.
Impact/Purpose:
The primary objectives of this research are to:
Develop methodologies so that landscape indicator values generated from different sensors on different dates (but in the same areas) are comparable; differences in metric values result from landscape changes and not differences in the sensors;
Quantify relationships between landscape metrics generated from wall-to-wall spatial data and (1) specific parameters related to water resource conditions in different environmental settings across the US, including but not limited to nutrients, sediment, and benthic communities, and (2) multi-species habitat suitability;
Develop and validate multivariate models based on quantification studies;
Develop GIS/model assessment protocols and tools to characterize risk of nutrient and sediment TMDL exceedence;
Complete an initial draft (potentially web based) of a national landscape condition assessment.
This research directly supports long-term goals established in ORDs multiyear plans related to GPRA Goal 2 (Water) and GPRA Goal 4 (Healthy Communities and Ecosystems), although funding for this task comes from Goal 4. Relative to the GRPA Goal 2 multiyear plan, this research is intended to "provide tools to assess and diagnose impairment in aquatic systems and the sources of associated stressors." Relative to the Goal 4 Multiyear Plan this research is intended to (1) provide states and tribes with an ability to assess the condition of waterbodies in a scientifically defensible and representative way, while allowing for aggregation and assessment of trends at multiple scales, (2) assist Federal, State and Local managers in diagnosing the probable cause and forecasting future conditions in a scientifically defensible manner to protect and restore ecosystems, and (3) provide Federal, State and Local managers with a scientifically defensible way to assess current and future ecological conditions, and probable causes of impairments, and a way to evaluate alternative future management scenarios.
Description:
Rapid post-fire watershed assessment to identify potential trouble spots for erosion and flooding can potentially aid land managers and Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation (BAER) teams in deploying mitigation and rehabilitation resources.
These decisions are inherently complex and spatial in nature and require a distributed hydrological modeling approach. The extensive data requirements and the task of building input parameter files have presented obstacles to the timely and effective use of complex distributed rainfall-runoff and erosion models by BAER teams and resource managers. Geospatial tools and readily-available digital sources of pre-fire land cover, topography, and soils combined with rainfall-runoff and erosion models can expedite assessments if properly combined, provided a post-fire burn-severity map is available. The AGWA (Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment)hydrologic modeling tool was developed to utilize nationally available spatial data sets and both empirical (SWAT) and more process-based (KINEROS2) distributed hydrologic models (see: www.tucson.ars.ag.gov/agwa). Through an intuitive interface the user selects an outlet from which AGWA delineates and discretizes the watershed using a Digital Elevation Model (DEM). The watershed model elements are then intersected with soils and land cover data layers to derive the requisite model input parameters. The chosen model is then run, and the results are imported back into AGWA for graphical display. AGWA can difference results from pre- and post-fire model simulations and display the change on the modeled watershed. This allows managers to identify potential problem areas where mitigation activities can be focused. An overview of AGWA and an application of it to the 2003 Aspen fire north of Tucson, Arizona are discussed herein.