Team Modeling Project

Reynolds Creek, Idaho

Dr. Nelson

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Overview

The Reynolds Creek watershed is a research watershed developed and maintained by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) which is part of the USDA.  It is located off of I-84, southwest of Boise, ID.

For links to information about the ARS, its projects, and the Reynolds Creek Basin go to this website.

Click here for a file that will bring up your watershed in Google Earth.

 

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Data

You will need to obtain Elevation (DEM) and Land use for this watershed.  Refer to previous assignments for recommended sources for this data.

The SSURGO Soils data for this water shed is more detail than most and includes special descriptors such as  "very gravelly" or "extremely cobbly" inaddition to the USDA texture classification.  Sin you need to understand ArcGIS a little more to process this data for use with WMS, you can download the data we have already processed here.  This data already has the proper texture and hydrologic soil type fields joined and you simply need to map it to a soil type coverage in WMS.

The coordinates for the rain gages and outlet locations are shown in the tables below.

	x	y
Gage 116x91	519008	4776343
Gage 155x07	518424	4771320
Gage 176x07	520055	4768117

These coordinates are in a UTM NAD27 Zone 11 projection, and the units are meters.

	x	y
Outlet	519393	4776495

These coordinates are in a UTM NAD83 Zone 11 projection, and the units are meters.

The basin includes approximately 21.13 sq. mi. of drainage area.

The two rainfall and runoff datasets are found in the table below:

Storm	Link to Observed Data
Storm 1	June '81
Storm 2	July '84

 

Assignment

Part 1

• Obtain Data - Go out and obtain any of the following data that is missing from you watershed.

  • Elevation - DEM from the USGS seamless server

  • Land Use - from webGIS website

  • SSURGO soil data - from the USDA Soil Data Mart

• Delineate you watershed

  • Outlet coordinates are located on your watershed page.

Part 2

• Setup an HMS model

  • Decide which loss method you want to use - Curve number or Green and Ampt

  • Decide which transformation method you wan to use - Do you need sub basins with routing? Clark or SCS method? Or maybe even the MODclark method?

• Setup a GSSHA Model

  • Define streams- we don't have any cross section info so you need to just decide what you think is adequate here.  Maybe try to research you region online.  Or try different cross section sizes to see if it makes a difference for your watershed.

  • Smooth streams

  • Create a Grid - consider using larger cell sizes than we have used in the past, somewhere between 100m and 150m

  • Clean Digital Dams

  • Use a simple uniform precipitation distribution to get the model working.

Part 3

• Define the precipitation for your storm

  • Raingage coordinates are listed on your watershed page.

  • Make sure you format the precipitation time steps according to the general requirements for HMS and GSSHA as we discussed/will discuss in class.

  • Get both models to run with the actual precipitation distribution.

Part 4

• Compare your models' outflow with the actual outflow

• Optimize and calibrate you HMS model to match the observed outflow.

• Manually calibrate your GSSHA model to better match the observed outflow.

Part 5

• Try to validate your models with another storm

  • Obtain the observed precipitation and outflow for the other storm for you watershed from the other group modeling that same watershed.

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