Improving Evapotranspiration Mechanisms in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Storm Water Management Model
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 21, Issue 10
Abstract
Most stormwater models oversimplify evapotranspiration (ET) processes, which restricts their applications in water budget analyses, ecosystem services assessments, and coupled modeling studies such as with urban climate models to investigate benefits of green infrastructure (GI) implementation. To address this need, the Penman–Monteith scheme was incorporated into the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s storm water management model (SWMM) to improve the latter’s ET routine. The modified SWMM allows heterogeneous and subdaily potential ET (PET) inputs, and includes the effects of water stress on actual ET (AET). The updated ET routine was validated for GI, including bioretention () and green roof (), by comparing with direct measurements. A case study showed the upgraded SWMM model generates improved daily ET estimates and more accurate temporal patterns than previous SWMM versions. The results also suggest that water cycle fluxes could be miscalculated if a homogeneous potential ET is used in SWMM and other stormwater models. For example, the annual percolation and AET amounts could be overestimated and underestimated by 406% and 9% respectively for landscapes, and the annual AET and runoff amounts could be overestimated and underestimated by 12–19% and 14–19% respectively for GI, if the mismatched PET time series is used.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by NSF EPSCoR grant IIA 1208732 awarded to Utah State University, as part of the State of Utah EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Award. Additional support was provided by the Global Change and Sustainability Center at the University of Utah in collaboration with the iUTAH EPSCoR Program. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors want to thank the Urban Water Research Group and the personnel of Facilities Management, especially its Landscape Maintenance section, of the University of Utah for their dedicated support to this project, and Will McDonald for his contributions for land cover classifications based on Lidar data and satellite images. The authors also want to thank all the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions to revise the paper.
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Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 21 • Issue 10 • October 2016
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© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 19, 2015
Accepted: Apr 11, 2016
Published online: Jun 16, 2016
Published in print: Oct 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Nov 16, 2016
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