Geomorphologic and Soil Hydraulic Parameters for Watershed Environmental Hydrology (WEHY) Model
This article is a reply.
VIEW THE ORIGINAL ARTICLEThis article is a reply.
VIEW THE ORIGINAL ARTICLEPublication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 9, Issue 6
Abstract
The upscaled hydrologic conservation equations in the Watershed Environmental Hydrology (WEHY) model are capable of taking into account the effect of heterogeneity within natural watersheds. Model parameters that are capable of describing the heterogeneity of the flow domains also need to be estimated. The parameters of the WEHY model are related to the physical properties of the watershed, and they can be estimated from readily available information on topography, soils, and vegetation/land cover conditions. The fundamental assumption of the parameter estimation methodology in this study is that the heterogeneities of land characteristics over a model computational unit (MCU), representing an individual hillslope, are spatially stationary. Consequently, the parameters of the WEHY model that represent the statistical moments of point-location parameter values (such as the variance of log saturated hydraulic conductivity) do not vary over different transects of an MCU. The geomorphologic parameters that describe the rilled surface geometry of MCUs are derived directly from the digital elevation model map of the watershed by using Arc/Info tools or ArcView. The soil hydraulic parameters of the WEHY model require a soil texture classification database and/or field investigations. In this paper, a detailed methodology on the estimation of the geomorphologic and soil hydraulic parameters of the WEHY model is described. Applications of the methodology to the Upper Cosumnes River watershed in California and the Shiobara-Dam watershed in Japan are also presented in order to illustrate how to utilize the available geographic information system database and field survey data for the estimation of the parameters of the WEHY model.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
1.
Agriculture handbook: Soil survey manual. (1993). Soil Survey Div., U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
2.
Bingner, R.L.;, Darden, R.W.;, Theurer, F.D.;, and Garbrecht, J. ( 1997). “GIS-based generation of AGNPS watershed routing and channel parameters.” ASAE Paper No. 97-2008, American Society of Agricultural Engineers, St. Joseph, Mich.
3.
Brooks, R.H.;, and Corey, A.T.; ( 1964). “Hydraulic properties of porous media.” Hydrology Paper No. 3, Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, Colo.
4.
Chen, Z.-Q., Govindaraju, R. S.;, and Kavvas, M. L.; (1994). “Spatial averaging of unsaturated flow equations for areally heterogeneous fields: Numerical simulations.” Water Resour. Res., 30(2), 534–544.
5.
Chen, Z.-Q., Kavvas, M.L.;, Tan, L., and Soong, S.-T. ( 1996). “Development of a regional atmospheric-hydrologic model for the study of climate change in California.” Proc., North American Water and Environment Congress, ASCE, Reston, Va. 1093–1098.
6.
Douglas, D. H.; (1986). “Experiments to locate ridges and channels to create a new type of digital elevation model.” Cartographica, 23(4), 29–61.
7.
Fairfield, J., and Leymarie, P. (1991). “Drainage networks from grid digital elevation models.” Water Resour. Res., 30(6), 1681–1692.
8.
Garbrecht, J., and Martz, L.W.; ( 1997). “TOPAZ Version 1.20: An automated digital landscape analysis tool for topographic evaluation, drainage identification, watershed segmentation and subcatchment parameterization—Overview.” Rep. No. GRL 97-2, Grazinglands Research Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, El Reno, Okla.
9.
Gardner, W. R.; (1958). “Some steady-state solutions of the unsaturated moisture flow equation with application to evaporation from a water table.” Soil Sci., 85(4), 228–232.
10.
Geospatial hydrologic modeling extension HEC-GeoHMS user’s manual. (2000). Hydrologic Engineering Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Davis, Calif.
11.
Kavvas, M. L.;, et al. (2004). “Watershed Environmental Hydrology (WEHY) model, based on upscaled conservation equations: Hydrologic module.” J. Hydrologic Eng., 9(6), 450–464.
12.
Leavesley, G.H.;, Lichty, R.W.;, Troutman, B.M.;, and Saindon, L.G.; ( 1983). “Precipitation-runoff modeling system: User’s manual.” U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Rep. No. 83-4238, Menlo Park, Calif.
14.
Martz, L. W., and Garbrecht, J. (1992). “Numerical definition of drainage network and subcatchment areas from digital elevation models.” Comput. Geosci., 18(6), 747–761.
15.
McCuen, R. H., Rawls, W. J., and Brakensiek, D. L. (1981). “Statistical analysis of the Brooks-Corey and the Green-Ampt parameters across soil textures.” Water Resour. Res., 2(4), 1005–1013.
16.
Morris, D. G., and Heerdegen, R. G. (1988). “Automatically derived catchment boundary and channel networks and their hydrological applications.” Geomorphology, 1(2), 131–141.
17.
O’Callaghan, J. F., and Mark, D. M. (1984). “The extraction of drainage networks from digital elevation data.” Comput. Vis. Graph. Image Process., 28, 323–344.
18.
Rawls, W. J.;, Brakensiek, D. L.;, and Saxton, K. E.; (1982). “Estimation of soil water properties.” Trans. ASAE, 25(5), 1316–1320.
19.
State soil geographic database: Data users guide. (1991). Soil Conservation Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
20.
Tan, L. ( 1997). “A climate change simulation over California using an integrated regional atmospheric-hydrologic model.” MS thesis, Univ. of California, Davis, Calif.
21.
van Genuchten, M. T. (1980). “A closed form equation for predicting hydraulic conductivity in unsaturated soils.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 44, 892–898.
22.
Viger, R.J.;, Markstrom, S.L.;, and Leavesley, G.H.; ( 1998). “The GIS Weasel—An interface for the treatment of spatial information used in watershed modeling and water resource management.” Proc., 1st Federal Interagency Hydrologic Modeling Conf., Vol. II, 73–80.
23.
Woolhiser, D.A.; ( 1974). “Simulation of unsteady flow.” Unsteady flow in open channels, K. Mahmood, ed., Water Resources Publications, Fort Collins, Colo.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 9 • Issue 6 • November 2004
Pages: 465 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 ASCE.
History
Published online: Oct 15, 2004
Published in print: Nov 2004
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.