Can-GLWS: Canadian Great Lakes Weather Service for the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) modelling

Abstract The rapid rise in availability of large geospatial datasets for the development of hydrological models such as Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has led to a dramatic increase in both the demand and availability of web services and tools that assist watershed modellers in incorporating data and knowledge into their modelling frameworks. Within the Canadian Great Lakes region, there is a huge potential for the application of SWAT in integrated water resources management. However, a potential barrier is the preparation of SWAT weather inputs that require time-intensive preprocessing of large data sets. Because such preprocessing is reproducible, the redundancy associated with it can be removed by introducing a web service that enables easy and open dissemination of climate data (including climate change and historical data) in SWAT-ready format. This short communication introduces such a web service called the Canadian Great Lakes Weather Data Service for SWAT (Can-GLWS). It hosts observed (historical) and projected (future) daily precipitation, daily maximum/minimum temperature, as well as weather generator database at regular grids (300 arc seconds or ~10 km) for use in SWAT simulations of the region. The novel Can-GLWS web service offers flexibility in selecting the region of interest by allowing them to be uploaded as a shapefile or to draw a rectangle or a polygon. We believe that such data as a service platform will help many practitioners to explore several issues pertaining to the sustainability of the freshwater resources of Canadian Great Lakes using the SWAT model.

[1]  Qiang Li,et al.  A new soil-temperature module for SWAT application in regions with seasonal snow cover , 2016 .

[2]  A. Agarwal,et al.  Assessment of rainfall bias correction techniques for improved hydrological simulation , 2018, International Journal of Climatology.

[3]  P. Goel,et al.  Identifying threshold storm events and quantifying potential impacts of climate change on sediment yield in a small upland agricultural watershed of Ontario , 2019, Hydrological Processes.

[4]  Raghavan Srinivasan,et al.  SWAT: Model Use, Calibration, and Validation , 2012 .

[5]  Junye Wang,et al.  Current and future hot-spots and hot-moments of nitrous oxide emission in a cold climate river basin. , 2018, Environmental pollution.

[6]  Junye Wang,et al.  Assessing climate change impacts on stream temperature in the Athabasca River Basin using SWAT equilibrium temperature model and its potential impacts on stream ecosystem. , 2019, The Science of the total environment.

[7]  Tirupati Bolisetti,et al.  Effect of climate change on low-flow conditions in the Ruscom River watershed, Ontario. , 2010 .

[8]  A. Laursen,et al.  Meeting updated phosphorus reduction goals by applying best management practices in the Grand River watershed, southern Ontario , 2019, Ecological Engineering.

[9]  Chandra A. Madramootoo,et al.  Evaluation of solar radiation estimation methods for reference evapotranspiration estimation in Canada , 2014, Theoretical and Applied Climatology.

[10]  Raghavan Srinivasan,et al.  Efficient multi-objective calibration of a computationally intensive hydrologic model with parallel computing software in Python , 2013, Environ. Model. Softw..

[11]  K. Abbaspour,et al.  Global soil, landuse, evapotranspiration, historical and future weather databases for SWAT Applications , 2019, Scientific Data.

[12]  P. Young,et al.  Data Science of the Natural Environment: A Research Roadmap , 2019, Front. Environ. Sci..

[13]  Jeffery S. Horsburgh,et al.  Integrating hydrologic modeling web services with online data sharing to prepare, store, and execute hydrologic models , 2020, Environ. Model. Softw..

[14]  Mary C. Hill,et al.  Integrated environmental modeling: A vision and roadmap for the future , 2013, Environ. Model. Softw..

[15]  Junye Wang,et al.  Predicting sediment yield and transport dynamics of a cold climate region watershed in changing climate. , 2018, The Science of the total environment.

[16]  Bruno De Fraine,et al.  OpenMI-based integrated sediment transport modelling of the river Zenne, Belgium , 2013, Environ. Model. Softw..

[17]  K. Denman,et al.  Carbon emission limits required to satisfy future representative concentration pathways of greenhouse gases , 2011 .

[18]  Anthony M. Castronova,et al.  Calibration of SWAT models using the cloud , 2014, Environ. Model. Softw..

[19]  Nicolas Ray,et al.  Distributed computation of large scale SWAT models on the Grid , 2013, Environ. Model. Softw..

[20]  Yehia El-khatib,et al.  Web technologies for environmental Big Data , 2015, Environ. Model. Softw..

[21]  C. Wellen,et al.  Quantifying the uncertainty of nonpoint source attribution in distributed water quality models: A Bayesian assessment of SWAT’s sediment export predictions , 2014 .

[22]  Raghavan Srinivasan,et al.  Impact of model development, calibration and validation decisions on hydrological simulations in West Lake Erie Basin , 2015 .

[23]  P. Goel,et al.  Predicting the temporal variation of flow contributing areas using SWAT , 2017 .

[24]  Gerald J Niemi,et al.  Integrated Measures of Anthropogenic Stress in the U.S. Great Lakes Basin , 2007, Environmental management.

[25]  T. Young,et al.  Great lakes water quality improvement. , 1986, Environmental science & technology.

[26]  P. Marquet,et al.  GCM compareR: A web application to assess differences and assist in the selection of general circulation models for climate change research , 2020, Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

[27]  P. Goel,et al.  Threshold storm approach for locating phosphorus problem areas: An application in three agricultural watersheds in the Canadian Lake Erie basin , 2020 .

[28]  Jennifer Badham,et al.  Effective modeling for Integrated Water Resource Management: A guide to contextual practices by phases and steps and future opportunities , 2019, Environ. Model. Softw..

[29]  N. Shrestha,et al.  Development of Asia Pacific Weather Statistics (APWS) dataset for use in Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) simulation , 2019 .

[30]  Y. Dibike,et al.  Climate-induced alteration of hydrologic indicators in the Athabasca River Basin, Alberta, Canada , 2017 .

[31]  David C.-L. Lam,et al.  Modeling as a Tool for Nutrient Management in Lake Erie: a Hydrodynamics Study , 2005 .

[32]  Yongbo Liu,et al.  Hydrologic modeling and evaluation of Best Management Practice scenarios for the Grand River watershed in Southern Ontario , 2016 .

[33]  William G. Booty,et al.  Validation of an agricultural non-point source model in a watershed in southern Ontario , 2004 .

[34]  Y. Dibike,et al.  Comparative evaluation of the effects of climate and land-cover changes on hydrologic responses of the Muskeg River, Alberta, Canada , 2016 .

[35]  John R. Williams,et al.  LARGE AREA HYDROLOGIC MODELING AND ASSESSMENT PART I: MODEL DEVELOPMENT 1 , 1998 .

[36]  M. Asadzadeh,et al.  Watershed derived nutrients for Lake Ontario inflows: Model calibration considering typical land operations in Southern Ontario , 2015 .

[37]  P. Sen.  Estimates of the Regression Coefficient Based on Kendall's Tau , 1968 .

[38]  Herman Bouwer,et al.  Integrated water management: emerging issues and challenges , 2000 .

[39]  M. Hutchinson,et al.  Customized spatial climate models for North America , 2011 .

[40]  D. Lettenmaier,et al.  Hydrologic Implications of Dynamical and Statistical Approaches to Downscaling Climate Model Outputs , 2004 .

[41]  Slobodan P. Simonovic,et al.  An Operational Model for Support of Integrated Watershed Management , 2010 .

[42]  Marie Sanderson.  CLIMATE CHANGE AND WATER IN THE GREAT LAKES BASIN , 1993 .

[43]  K. Calvin,et al.  The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions from 1765 to 2300 , 2011 .

[44]  Dejian Zhang,et al.  Moving SWAT model calibration and uncertainty analysis to an enterprise Hadoop-based cloud , 2016, Environ. Model. Softw..

[45]  David R. Maidment,et al.  GIS preprocessing for rapid initialization of HEC-HMS hydrological basin models using web-based data services , 2020, Environ. Model. Softw..

[46]  K. Abbaspour,et al.  Estimating Uncertain Flow and Transport Parameters Using a Sequential Uncertainty Fitting Procedure , 2004 .

[47]  Roger Moore,et al.  An overview of the open modelling interface and environment (the OpenMI) , 2005 .