Model Library

Capabilities

• Adaptable to accommodate diverse hydrologic, water quality, land and water management processes, while also enabling scenario analysis (Yuan et al., 2020);
• It considers pollution from various landscapes, including uplands, shallow water table areas, wetlands, urban areas, and mining sites (Yuan et al., 2020).

Limitations

• It does not allow the utilization of dynamic land-use changes (Tarabih et al., 2024);
• Its simplified approach for cell to stream water and solute delivery, simplified in-stream water quality processes, inability to adequately represent small-scale short-term storm event impacts, and simplified representation of impervious urban land conditions (Graham et al., 2009);
• Pervasive lack of attention to detail in rigorously documenting assumptions, methodologies, sensitivity analyses, calibration and verification efforts, and uncertainty analyses in the WAM Technical Documentation and WAM Applications Reports (Graham et al., 2009);
• The need for extensive physical data, which can be challenging to acquire in some areas (Yuan et al., 2020);
• Few applications developed specifically for Florida (Yuan et al., 2020);
• Not good at simulating small-scale and short-term storm event impact (Yuan et al., 2020).

Inputs

Topography, LULC data, Soil data, Meteorological data, Hydrological data, Water quality data.

Outputs

Simulation results of time-series hydrological and constituents’ loadings (nutrients, sediment) in watershed(s).

References

Khare, Y. P., Naja, G. M., Paudel, R., & Martinez, C. J. (2020). A watershed scale assessment of phosphorus remediation strategies for achieving water quality restoration targets in the western Everglades. Ecological Engineering, 143, 105663. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2019.105663

Tarabih, O. M., Arias, M. E., Santos, A. L., Hua, J., Cooper, R. Z., Khanal, A., Dang, T. D., Khare, Y. P., Charkhgard, H., Rains, M. C., & Zhang, Q. (2024). Effects of the spatial distribution of best management practices for watershed-wide nutrient load reduction. Ecological Engineering, 201, 107211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2024.107211

Objectives

The objectives of the study were: (1) to expand the spatial model domain of Khare et al (2020) to include areas that flow into Big Cypress National Preserve; (2) to extend the temporal domain of Khare et al (2020) another decade to model the baseline hydrology and water quality conditions from 2000 to 2022; (3) to determine water quality improvements associated with implementation of BMPs and STA, and hydrologic restoration specific to the updated restoration alternative.

The ultimate goal of this study was to guide future research and the implementation of an optimal placement and performance expected for a portfolio of BMPs in order to reduce the net watershed contribution of nutrient loads to a receiving water body.