Hydrology EESC BC 3025

Watershed management simulator

Introduction

A watershed, or drainage basin, is the land area that delivers water, sediments, and dissolved substances to a particular body of water. Many parameters can be controlled in a watershed that influence the availability of water. The watershed simulator helps you learn what it takes to manage a watershed to meet the water needs you have selected.

The watershed simulator has the following elements:

You are the watershed manager who needs to provide enough water of adequate quality to meet needs of people, animals, and plants that live in the watershed. You also need to protect the area from flooding and provide enough water for fisheries and a nuclear power plant.

In teams of two perform the following investigations. The program can be started by hitting the 'water' icon.

Investigation 1: The natural system

Look at the annual variability of the discharge rate of the Rogue and Colorado River @ Grand Canyon and @Hoover Dam in comparison.
  1. What is the seasonality of the discharge rate in the rivers and why does it differ between rivers?
  2. Where does the water come from?
  3. Do natural streams systems experience flooding or stream dewatering?

Investigation 2: Municipal use of water

  1. Add an urban area to the watershed and match demand with supply over a year
  2. When does the municipal demand peak?
  3. What is this water used for?
  4. How much difference is there between the minimum and maximum water demand?
  5. Choose GW as the sole source of water. How is GW storage  affected by this policy?
  6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using SW vs GW as source? What is the  most reasonable strategy?
  7. How many people can you support before you begin to have water shortages?

Investigation 3: Agricultural use of water

  1. When does the agricultural demand peak?
  2. What is the water used for?
  3. How much difference is there between the minimum and maximum water demand?

Investigation 4: Reservoir management

  1. Try to operate the power plant on the salt river. What do you observe?
  2. Add a reservoir to the river with a capacity of one year of discharge.
  3. During which parts of the year should you try to save the water in the reservoir and  when should you allow the reservoir to be drawn down? In other words what is the best strategy to manage the system?
  4. Which size reservoir is the easiest to manage?

Investigation 5: Water quality

  1. How does the water quality change along the river?
  2. Can you explain the variation in time?

Investigation 6: Putting it all together

  1. Form two groups with 4 students each
  2. Set priorities
  3. Assign roles: executive (mouse operator), reservoir and in-stream use operator, urban manager, agricultural manager
  4. Keep track of time, salary, and all the parameters of the model.

Resources

If the software is not installed on your computer, download the zipped file from the web (water_sim.zip). Unzip the file and click on the water.exe logo. Software works on Windows PCs up to Windows 2000.