Hydrological Resource Sheds
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 13, Issue 9
Abstract
When we consider a location with a material (e.g., water, pollutant, sediment) passing through it, we can ask: “Where did the material come from and how long did it take to reach the location?” We can quantify the answer by defining the areas contributing to this location during various time periods as “resource sheds.” Various resource sheds and their source material distributions are rigorously defined and properties derived. For watershed hydrology, we compute resource sheds and their source distributions with a spatially distributed hydrology model by tracing water departing from a “cell” (say ) over one time interval, traveling through intermediate cells soil, groundwater, and surface zones, and arriving at the watershed mouth in another time interval. This requires modeling all cells, but only tracing contributions from one at a time. By then combining these simulations for all cell loadings, we construct a map of the contributions over the entire watershed for specific departure and arrival time intervals. We then combine results of several sets of simulations to determine the source distribution for any time period and infer resource sheds from these mappings. We give examples for the Maumee River watershed in northern Ohio, discuss computation reduction, and suggest future extensions to other materials.
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Acknowledgments
The writers thank Donna Kashian of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) and the three anonymous reviewers who helped us to increase the paper’s clarity. This is GLERL contribution number 1,426 and is sponsored in part by New York Sea Grant award number R/CD-27 (“Great Lakes resource shed delineation”). Although reviewed by the USEPA and approved for publication, it may not necessarily reflect official agency policy.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 13 • Issue 9 • September 2008
Pages: 873 - 885
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: May 1, 2007
Accepted: Nov 30, 2007
Published online: Sep 1, 2008
Published in print: Sep 2008
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