Summary

A collaborative program to to aid in basin-scale water and environmental resource management by coupling watershed models that describe the physical hydrologic setting, routing and reservoir management models that account for downstream water use, and reach-specific hydraulic and biogeochemical models conditioned on upstream streamflow.

Competition among water-resource users in many basins in the western United States has resulted in a need for near real-time assessments of water availability and use. The use of coupled hydrologic and water-management models can provide these assessments with substantial benefits for water-resource planning and operation. Advancements in computer hardware and modeling software have enabled the development of such water-resource models.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) are working collaboratively on a long-term project, termed the Watershed and River Systems Management Program (WARSMP). The goal of the program is to first couple watershed and river-reach models that simulate the physical hydrologic setting with routing and reservoir management models that account for water availability and use. The coupled models are then to be applied to Reclamation projects in the western United States. The coupling provides a database-centered decision support system (DSS, fig. 1) for use by WARSMP and other projects. The program also supports the development of the models and necessary tools for coupling and use of the models.