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AGWA: The Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment Tool
Citation:
Guertin, P., D. Goodrich, I. Burns, Y. Korgaonkar, J. Barlow, B. Sheppard, C. Unkrich, AND W. Kepner. AGWA: The Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment Tool. In Proceedings, ASCE 2015 Watershed Managment Symposium, Reston, VA, August 05 - 07, 2015. American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Reston, VA, 120-130, (2015).
Impact/Purpose:
Proceedings paper for the ASCE 2015 Watershed Management Symposium (August 2015). USDA personnel presenting
Description:
The Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment Tool (AGWA, see: www.tucson.ars.ag.gov/agwa or http://www.epa.gov/esd/land-sci/agwa/) is a GIS interface jointly developed by the USDA-Agricultural Research Service, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the University of Arizona, and the University of Wyoming. Its purpose is to automate the parameterization and execution of a suite of hydrologic and erosion models (RHEM, KINEROS2 and SWAT). 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 terrain, 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 multiple simulations to examine relative change over a variety of input scenarios (e.g. climate/storm change, land cover change, implementation of BMPs, present conditions and alternative futures). This allows managers to identify potential problem areas where additional monitoring can be undertaken or mitigation activities can be focused. Application examples of AGWA will be presented, including post-fire assessment, implementation of rangeland BMPs, green infrastructure, and future change analysis. Versions of AGWA are available for ESRI ArcView 3.x and ArcGIS 9.x and 10.x.