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HYDROLOGY AND SEDIMENT MODELING USING THE BASINS NON-POINT SOURCE MODEL
Citation:
Cyterski, M J. HYDROLOGY AND SEDIMENT MODELING USING THE BASINS NON-POINT SOURCE MODEL. Presented at 2000 Annual Meeting and International Conference of the American Institute of Hydrology, Research Triangle Park, NC, November 5-8, 2000.
Impact/Purpose:
Develop, test, and refine models to evaluate sub-basins to determine whether local water quality problems due to excessive nutrient loading exist, and if so, to characterize them and determine their relationships to nutrient loading. Develop models to simulate overland flow and non-point source pollutant loads to track and assess nutrient loadings across watersheds and provide approaches for estimating nutrient budgets within sub-basins and for predicting changes in nutrient budgets in response to changes in watershed activities/land use/land cover. Demonstrate the application of the recommended approach/models for predicting changes in nutrient budgets in response to changes in proposed watershed activities/land use/land cover, resulting in specific recommendations for reducing the nutrient loads to a basin. For coherence, cooperation, and economics, these models will be housed in a unified, consistent, computational environment for environmental analyses that allows teaching (i.e., technology transfer) to multiple users (users concentrate on problem, not model input/output); that appeals to multi-disciplinary groups for distribution and use as a consistent assessment methodology (includes models, tools, modular design and facilitated updates of science/engineering); that includes resident visualization, animation tools, documentation and tutorials on-line, hooks to GIS and environmental databases; and is executable on UNIX, personal computers, and HPC resources.
Objective # 2.2 Conserve and enhance nation's waters: By 2005, conserve and enhance the ecological health of the nation's (state, interstate, and tribal) waters and aquatic ecosystems-rivers and streams, lakes, wetlands, estuaries, coastal areas, oceans, and groundwater-so that 75% of waters will support healthy aquatic communities.
Description:
The Non-Point Source Model (Hydrologic Simulation Program-Fortran, or HSPF) within the EPA Office of Water's BASINS watershed modeling system was used to simulate streamflow and total suspended solids within Contentnea Creek, North Carolina, which is a tributary of the Neuse River. I utilized landuse coverage circa 1996 created by EarthSat Corporation. Hourly meteorological measures (precipitation, pan evaporation, temperature) for 1970-1995 were taken from a weather station at Wilson, NC. Missing meteorological data were supplemented with measures from Raleigh Airport. Time series of observed flow from 1970-1995 gathered by the USGS at Hookerton, NC, and Nahunta Swamp, NC, were used to calibrate/validate the hydrological component of the model. Simulated suspended sediment concentrations were evaluated by comparison to 125 values of TSS measured at Hookerton, NC. Graphical and statistical analyses indicated good model fit to observed flow but observed suspended sediment concentrations were less successfully replicated. Parameter values needed to produce the flow calibration were well within the ranges of values used in other HSPF studies conducted in the Atlantic coastal plain. This was affirmed by reference to the software parameter database HSPFParm, which summarizes previous HSPF studies. Parameter values for sediment simulation were also within the range used by previous investigators in this physiographic province.