Citation:

Babendreier, J. OpenTERRAworks Software System - An Open-Source 2D/3D Landscape Design GIS Tool. 6th Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds (ICRW), Shepherdstown, WV, July 23 - 26, 2018.

Impact/Purpose:

USEPA’s OpenTERRAworks Software System was designed to make it easy for USEPA staff and others to get and modify geospatial datasets supporting modeling projects. Serving as a base, functional open-source GIS platform, OpenTERRAworks offers standard spatial-processing functionalities alongside a unique core set of 2D/3D landscape design operations geared for environmental assessments. Users can auto-acquire web-served datasets needed to establish baseline conditions for any CONUS site. Users can also modify and produce new landscape datasets for modeling baseline vs. proposed future landscape conditions before they occur. The GIS software advances the capabilities of Regional and Program Offices to achieve more realistic and easily rendered site- and watershed-scale assessments of baseline and future watershed conditions. OTW software provides EPA staff a relatively easy-to-use capability to further advance regional cumulative impact assessments under the Clean Water Act (e.g. 404, 402, Watersheds, WQS) and NEPA. OpenTERRAworks’ modular design also allows developers to easily add to and improve on its existing routines. This was done to expand on OpenTERRAworks’ routines to directly support its interoperable integration with USEPA’s RIMM (Risk-Informed Materials Management) Tool System. Supporting site-specific, multiscale exposure and risk assessment needs, OpenTERRAworks allows Agency staff to auto-acquire input data directly consumed by RIMM’s science models.

Description:

Human activities involving significant terrain alteration (e.g. earthworks operations associated with mines, urban development, landslides) can lead to wide-ranging changes in the surrounding terrestrial and aquatic environments. Potential aesthetic impacts can be associated with modified relief, soils, or change in land cover. Additionally, changes can be seen in spatiotemporal rates of surface runoff and erosion; rerouted flow paths; impacts to water quantity and quality; and species and ecosystem composition. Readily-accessible GIS-based landscape design tools available to the environmental community are lacking. Often modelers lack tools to create the detailed views of the land needed to model environmental changes before they happen. The OpenTERRAworks Software System (OTW) is an open-source Geographical Information System (GIS) that expands the capacity of USEPA to predict hillslope- to watershed-scale effects of proposed, alternative, and legacy landscape designs involving significant terrain modification terrain (3D) and/or surface (2D) modification. Users can readily access web-served landscape datasets and modify acquired data to represent changes in terrain elevations, soils, land use/land cover, and hydrography. OTW represents a "substitution" pattern for consuming landscape data that capture many key features of the environment needed to understand and predict future watershed conditions at multiple scales. OTW is not a model, but instead helps generate modified data in formats that many hydrology models and other analytical frameworks already consume. OTW provides a set of site-level, value-added “design operations” (e.g. cut, fill) for defining landscape change within the conterminous US. OTW tracks design branches and phases at and across sites. OTW’s geologic erosion routine and a companion dataset of coal seam data (West Virginia only) allows users to construct resource layers they can employ for design cuts. Typical intended consumers of OTW output files are analytical tools or models that already consume HUC8-scale geospatial datasets in standard formats. Typical uses include producing modified datasets, allowing users to analyze “futures” and/or conduct comparative analysis of baseline vs. future landscapes. OTW’s newest Model Mode facilitates customized extensions that let model developers and users automate production of input data that can be consumed directly by their modeling system (e.g. add new map layers and web-services as needed).

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