Digital Watersheds

David R. Maidment

Center for Research in Water Resources

University of Texas at Austin

Waters Network MeetingBaltimore, Oct 23, 2007

Collaborators

• San Diego Supercomputer Center– Ilya Zaslavsky, David Valentine, Tom

Whitenack

• Utah State University– David Tarboton, Jeff Horsburgh, Kim

Schreuders

• Drexel University– Michael Piasecki, Bora Beran, Yoori Choi

• University of South Carolina– Jon Goodall

Additional Collaborators

• Environmental Systems Research Institute– Dean Djokic, Zhumei Qian, Zichuan Ye, Christine

Dartiguenave, Clint Brown, Steve Kopp

• National Center for Atmospheric Research– David Gochis, Larry Winter

• Unidata, Boulder, CO– Jon Caron, Ben Domenico

• University of Texas at Austin– Tim Whiteaker, Cedric David, Ernest To, Nishesh

Mehta

Formal Publication of Data

• Collin Bode: “Right now we don’t have a mechanism for someone to publish a dataset: how do you give credit for a well groomed dataset?”

• Johnnie Moore: “Where is the archiving process? Where is the common data held and how will it be accessed? HIS is not pulling their data into one place – do we need a centralized location/server for all data?”

Academic science is project based. What happens when the project ends?

Need a peer review process for data

Digital WatershedHow can hydrologists integrate observed and

modeled data from various sources into a single description of the environment?

Digital Watersheds

• Requirements

• Principles

• Arc Hydro

• NHDPlus

• Modeling

Digital Watersheds

• Requirements

• Principles

• Arc Hydro

• NHDPlus

• Modeling

Requirements

• Hydrologic synthesis: (Günther Blöschl, WRR 2006) is needed across– Processes: interacting dynamic systems

including feedbacks between components – Places: plethora of case studies around the

world in past decades– Scales: general characteristics of processes

as a function of space and time scales for the same site or an ensemble of sites

Digital Watershed Framework

• Must be independent of process, place and scale so that– It can be implemented for any process at any

place at any scale;– It can be used to link processes, compare

places, and integrate across scales

• Hydrology of a dynamic earth– Human impact on landscape– Need to think of evolution of critical zone in

geologic time

Ilya Zaslavsky

Robust DW representation: formal requirements

• Standard platform- and software-independent template• both computer and human-readable• Can materialize DW into common open or vendor-specific

documents or services (e.g. geodatabases, map services, SOAP services) from both local and remote data and models

• Expresses how DW integrates different types of data objects from lower levels (data layers, services, real time streams, etc., processes and models, regulatory framework): various spatio-temporal or attribute join models (integration models)

• Support DW analsys for completeness (data gaps), consistency (projections, formats, temporal reference), availability of integration models

• ease of integration with other emerging digital representations (digital estuary, etc.)

• compatibility with CI: ontology support, SOA-reliance, XML representation of sources.

• evolving and flexible: ease of update as new knowledge or data sources become available

Hydrologic Information Server

Microsoft SQLServer Relational Database

Observations Data Geospatial Data

GetSites

GetSiteInfo

GetVariables

GetVariableInfo

GetValues

DASH – data access system for hydrologyWaterOneFlow services

ArcGIS Server

Synthesis models in DW

• Co-location in space: boundaries of most data layers are defined by watershed boundaries

• Other types: based on functional relationships between watershed parameters (atmospheric, groundwater flows, underlying geology, as well as demographic and economic variables and processes that don’t necessarily coincide with natural boundaries). – For example: pointing to conditions upstream and downstream

• DW representation must explicitly include the types of joins between different watershed elements, to make automatic instantiation and update of digital watersheds possible. DW as a system of integrated views.

Digital Environments

• Digital watershed is one of several constructs that describe particular water environments

• Others are digital atmosphere, digital lake, digital river, digital reach, digital snowpack, digital soil, digital aquifer, digital estuary, digital bay

We need a set of principles for design of digital environments and ways to trace the movement of water among them

Digital Watersheds

• Requirements

• Principles

• Arc Hydro

• NHDPlus

• Modeling

Generalize the observations information model

Site

Variable

Value (Time)

Location

Variable

Value (Time)

An environment is described by a set of spatial featuresIndexed by Hydro Code

A process is described by a set of variablesIndexed by Variable Code

Site Code

Variable Code

What Have We Learned?

Variable Code Variable Name Units

LBR:USU10 Temperature degree celcius

LBR:USU11 Gage height international foot

LBR:USU15 Relative humidity percent

LBR:USU16 Precipitation millimeter

LBR:USU18 Wind speed meters per second

LBR:USU19 Wind direction degree

Site Code Site Name Latitude Longitude

LittleBearRiver:USU-LBR-Mendon Little Bear River at Mendon Road near Mendon, Utah 41.718473 -111.946402

LittleBearRiver:USU-LBR-Paradise Little Bear River at McMurdy Hollow near Paradise, Utah 41.575552 -111.855217

LittleBearRiver:USU-LBR-ExpFarm Utah State University Experimental Farm near Wellsville, Utah 41.666993 -111.890567

Network : Site -- Sites have meaning within an observation network and are indexedwith Site Codes.

Vocabulary : Variable -- Variables have meaning within a vocabulary and are indexedwith Variable Codes.

Site

Variable

Value (Time)

Feature

Waterbody

HydroIDHydroCodeFTypeNameAreaSqKmJunctionID

HydroPoint

HydroIDHydroCodeFTypeNameJunctionID

Watershed

HydroIDHydroCodeDrainIDAreaSqKmJunctionIDNextDownID

ComplexEdgeFeature

EdgeType

Flowline

Shoreline

HydroEdge

HydroIDHydroCodeReachCodeNameLengthKmLengthDownFlowDirFTypeEdgeTypeEnabled

SimpleJunctionFeature

1HydroJunction

HydroIDHydroCodeNextDownIDLengthDownDrainAreaFTypeEnabledAncillaryRole

*

1

*

HydroNetwork

*

HydroJunction

HydroIDHydroCodeNextDownIDLengthDownDrainAreaFTypeEnabledAncillaryRole

HydroJunction

HydroIDHydroCodeNextDownIDLengthDownDrainAreaFTypeEnabledAncillaryRole

1

1

CouplingTable

SiteIDHydroID

Sites

SiteIDSiteCode

SiteNameLatitudeLongitude…

Observations Data Model

1

1

OR

Definition: A Digital Watershed is the electronic representation of the watershed representing the synthesis of both the data and the spatial representation of the dataODM Digital Watershed Geography Model

Digital Watersheds

• Requirements

• Principles

• Arc Hydro

• NHDPlus

• Modeling

Flow

Time

Time Series

Hydrography

Hydro Network

Channel System

Drainage System

Arc Hydro Components

HydroID HydroID

Arc Hydro: GIS for Water ResourcesPublished by ESRI Press

The Arc Hydro data model andapplication tools are in the publicdomain

Data Data Integration Integration based on based on synthesis of synthesis of data layersdata layers

Data Integration Based on Behavior

“Follow a drop of water from where it falls on the land, to the stream, and all the way to the ocean.”

R.M. Hirsch, USGS

Integrating Data Inventory using a Behavioral Model

Relationships betweenobjects linked by tracing pathof water movement

Arc Hydro II – one water model

Surface water featuresGroundwater features

Time Series

Linking surface water and groundwater data

Hydro network Aquifers

In the future go to 3D...

Hydrovolumes and Geovolumes

Digital Watersheds

• Requirements

• Principles

• Arc Hydro

• NHDPlus

• Modeling

NHDPlus

Basins: Administratively chosendrainage areas

Watersheds: A tesselation ofa basin for a particular purpose

Catchments: A tesselation ofa basin using physical rules

Scales of Representation of Drainage Systems

Digital Elevation Model: a representation of the land surface as a spatial continuum

3-D detail of the Tongue river at the WY/Mont border from LIDAR.

Roberto GutierrezUniversity of Texas at Austin

Water Resource Regions and HUC’s

NHDPlus for Region 17E

NHDPlus Reach Catchments ~ 3km2

About 1000 reach catchments in each 8-digit HUC

Average reach length = 2km 2.3 million reaches for continental US

Reach Attributes

• Slope• Elevation• Mean annual flow

– Corresponding velocity

• Drainage area• % of upstream

drainage area in different land uses

• Stream order

Mean Annual Flow on NHDPlus

Mean Annual Flow and Velocityfor each reach is estimated

Percentile distributionsof flow are given forstream gage locations

BaseFlow Index on NHDPlus

BaseFlow Index estimatesthe proportion of the meanannual flow that comes fromgroundwater

NHDPlus and National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD)

• NLCD is a classification of land cover by USGS into 21 classes

• NHDPlus Catchments have attributes of the % of each land cover class in their local area

• NHDPlus Flowlines are attributed with their % land cover class from their total upstream watershed

NLCD Land Change

1992 Land Cover 2001 Land Cover

USGS is putting out in December 2007 a new Land Change productwhich consistently classifies 30m Landsat imagery from 1992and 2001 and produces a pixel by pixel accounting of land cover change in 7 land cover categories

NHDPlus has elevation attributes on streams

Longitudonal Stream Bed Profile

Arc Hydro connects geospatial and temporal water resources data

Arc Hydro

NHDPlus

Weather

Streamflow

Digital Watersheds

• Requirements

• Principles

• Arc Hydro

• NHDPlus

• Modeling

Hydrologic Simulation

• How do we enable a “community” approach to models? A framework, concept with open source tools?– The NCAR approach – very large computing

resources operating over a complex modeling framework (CCMP)

– The OpenMI approach – making existing models interoperable and creating model services

Hydrologic Simulation

• How do we enable a “community” approach to models? A framework, concept with open source tools?– The NCAR approach – very large computing

resources operating over a complex modeling framework (CCMP)

– The OpenMI approach – making existing models interoperable and creating model services

Climate Model – Hydrology Linkage

Atmospheric Data (NARR+NEXRAD)

Stream and River Flow Model

Land Surface - Atmosphere Model

(NOAH)

Cedric David, David Gochis (NCAR)

NOAH Land Surface ModelLand – atmosphere processes

First version in 1999 Noah is fully coupled with WRF (North American Model)

900 m resolution in our study

NOAH-Distributed adds Land Surface Routing processes

• Overland flow routing: fully unsteady, explicit, finite difference, 2-dimensional diffusive wave flowing over the land surface

• Subsurface runoff: 'Shallow' groundwater flow (down to 2m depth) explicitly modeled using a quasi-steady state saturated flow model 30 m

resolution in our study

Sphere-spheroid conversion

Latitude is different

Earth is a Sphere

Earth is a Spheroid

HydrologyAtmospheric sciences

Running NOAH-D over NHDPlus at NCAR

NARR

•Downward radiations

•Temperature

•Wind

•Pressure

•Humidity

NHDPlus

•Elevation

•Ideal precipitation

•Soil moisture

•Runoff

•Upward radiations

•Evapotranspiration

•etc.

30 m land surface routing

900 m land/atmosphere interaction

Conclusion is that thereis greater granularity in thelandscape than in the atmosphereand land – atmosphere modelneeds to be adapted to NHDPlusnot the reverse

Hydrologic Simulation

• How do we enable a “community” approach to models? A framework, concept with open source tools?– The NCAR approach – very large computing

resources operating over a complex modeling framework (CCMP)

– The OpenMI approach – making existing models interoperable and creating model services

• Project sponsored by the European Commission to promote integration of water models within the Water Framework Directive

• Software standards for model linking• Uses model core as an “engine”• http://www.openMI.org

OpenMI Conceptual Framework

VALUES

All values are referenced in a what-where-when framework, allowing different data resources or models to communicate data

Space, L

Time, T

Variables, V

D

An application of the data cube to integrate simulation modelsJon Goodall, University of South Carolina

Typical model architectureApplication

User interface + engineEngine

Simulates a process – flow in a channelAccepts inputProvides output

ModelAn engine set up to represent a particular location e.g. a reach of the Thames

Engine

Output data

Input data

Model application

Run

Write

Write

Read

User interface

Accepts Provides

Rainfall

(mm)

Runoff

(m3/s)

Temperature

(Deg C)

Evaporation

(mm)

Accepts Provides

Upstream Inflow

(m3/s)

Outflow

(m3/s)

Lateral inflow

(m3/s)

Abstractions

(m3/s)

Discharges

(m3/s)

River Model

Linking modelled quantities

Rainfall Runoff Model

Data transfer at run time

Rainfall runoff

Output data

Input data

User interface

River

Output data

Input data

User interface

GetValues(..)

Models for the processes

River(InfoWorks RS)

Rainfall(database)

Sewer(Mouse)

RR(Sobek-Rainfall

-Runoff)

Data exchange3 Rainfall.GetValues

River(InfoWorks-RS)

Rainfall(database)

Sewer(Mouse)

2 RR.GetValues

7 RR.GetValues

RR(Sobek-Rainfall

-Runoff)

1 Trigger.GetValues

6 Sewer.GetValues

call

data

4

5 8

9

Coupling the HIS with Hydrologic Simulation Models using OpenMI

ODM

ObservationsData Model

WaterOneFlow Web Services

Water Markup Language

WOF WaterML

MODFLOW HEC-RAS Others

SWATHSPF“academic” models...

The Open Modelling Interface (OpenMI)

OpenMI

• Component-based modeling framework

• Defines a standard for interfacing models, databases, and web services.

WaterOneFlow Web Services

WOF

OpenMILinkable Component

OpenMIModel Configuration

(1) (2) (3)

Web Services for Models

HEC-RAS

USGSNWIS

WSDL

WSDLWeb Services for Simulation Models

WaterOneFlow Web Services for Data

OpenMI Workflow

In an effort to build cyberinfrastructure for the hydrologic sciences, we are extending OpenMI to utilize models as web services.

Extending OpenMI for Distributed Computing

Connects to remote database via web

services

Connects to remote model via web services

Goal: To allow a modeler to create a workflow from OpenMI components that wrap web services.

Model linkage designed on client machine

Digital WatershedHow can hydrologists integrate observed and

modeled data from various sources into a single description of the environment?

Digital Watersheds

• Requirements

• Principles

• Arc Hydro

• NHDPlus

• Modeling