Chesapeake Community Modeling Program

CCMP Newsletter | November 2010

Volume 3, Issue 5

Introduction

The CCMP is pleased to annouce that it is collaborating with the Chesapeake Bay Program on investigating potential replacements for the CH3D Hydrodynamic Model. Please read below for more details. Also in this issue, you can read about an open source high school, our featured modeler Carl Cerco, and our featured model, SWAT. We hope you enjoy!

As always, if you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know!

Contents

1. CCMP News in brief
2. Open Source on the March
3. Featured Modeler: Carl Cerco
4. Featured Model: SWAT
5. Upcoming Meetings

1. CCMP News in Brief

The Future of Chesapeake Bay Hydrodynamic Modeling

At a recent Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) Modeling Sub-Committee meeting, there was discussion about how CH3D had reached its limits in terms of its utility to future CBP water quality modeling efforts. Over the next couple years, the CBP will be actively searching for a replacement for CH3D. To facilitate this effort, CCMP will be organizing and hosting a two day meeting to discuss potential options for replacing CH3D. The meeting is tentatively scheduled for June 8 & 9, 2011. The timing is perfect as the Estuarine Hypoxia Component of the SURA Super‐Regional Modeling Testbed project will be completing its review of hydrodynamic models and their ability to model hypoxia. As mentioned in the last newsletter, CCMP is heavily involved in the SURA project.

Meeting logistics are currently being developed and we will keep you posted!

Upcoming CCMP Steering Committee Meeting

The next CCMP Steering Committee meeting will be held at noon on November 22, 2010 at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. The current membership of the CCMP SC includes: Raleigh Hood (chair), Bill Ball, Chris Duffy, Claire Welty, Gary Shenk, Doug Wilson, Barry Stamey, Kevin McIlhany, Don Weller, Carl Friedrichs, and Alexey Voinov, with Kevin Sellner and Dave Jasinski attending as representatives of the CRC and the CCMP. Participation in this meeting is open and encouraged. If you would like to attend, please contact Raleigh Hood (rhood@umces.edu).

CBP Modeling Update

The Chesapeake Bay Program Modeling Team is working to complete the updated documentation of the Phase 5.3.0 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Model by the close of this year and will be providing that to the user community. The team is preparing for the next calibration (Phase 5.3.2) of the Watershed Model for application in modeling support for the Phase II Watershed Implementation Plans next year. The quarterly review meeting of the Modeling Team is scheduled for the January 11th and 12th at the Joe Macknis Memorial Conference Room (Fish Shack) at the Chesapeake Bay Program Office.

CCMP at Modeling for Environmental Change Meeting

CCMP Steering Committee member Carl Friedrichs and former CCMP Program Manager Alexey Voinov attended the "2010 Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSMDS) Meeting: Modeling for Environmental Change", held in San Antonio, TX, October 14-17, where Carl presented a invited plenary talk entitled "Application of CDSMS to Chesapeake Bay Models" and a poster entitled "Chesapeake Bay Hydrodynamic and Hypoxia Model Intercomparison: Initial Results". Carl is the Chair of the Chesapeake Research Focus Group (FRG) of CSDMS, and he is Team Leader for the Estuarine Hypoxia component of the NOAA-IOOS/SURA "Super-Regional Testbed to Improve Models of Environmental Processes on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Coasts". The Chesapeake FRG is co-sponsored by CSDMS and CCMP and aims to act as the academic research arm of CCMP. The CSDMS Chesapeake FRG and the SURA Testbed project were highlighted in the December 2009 and August 2010 CCMP Newsletters, respectively. Further information about the 2010 CSDMS Meeting, including downloadable copies of both of Carl's presentations and links to the Chesapeake FRG webpage (click on "Group area"), can by found at: http://csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/CSDMS_2010_meeting.

2. Open Source on the March

Google exposes the next generation to open source

Google is putting on a contest to introduce 13-18 year olds to the wonders of open source software development. Participants will produce open source code, documentation, training materials, and user experience research for participating organizations. These organizations will be announced on November 5 and the contest will begin on November 22. More details can be found here.

Open High School

Building a curriculum from open educational resources, the Open High School of Utah is allowing 9th and 10th graders the opportunity to take their classes online. All materials are aligned with Utah state educational standards. Total enrollment for the 2010-11 school year will be 250 students split between the two grades. Eleventh and twelfth grades will be added in subsequent years with the first graduating class in 2013. The Open High School of Utah is a public charter school and their curriculum is available online as an open educational resource. You can check out the school and you can view a 6 minute documentary about the school at http://opensource.com/education/10/9/open-source-goes-high-school?sc_cid=70160000000SrxUAAS .

3. Featured Modeler: Carl Cerco

Environmental Laboratory
U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center
Waterways Experiment Station
3909 Halls Ferry Road
Vicksburg, MS 39180-6199

- Newark College of Engineering, BS, 1972
- University of North Carolina, MS, 1974
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MS, 1977
- College of William and Mary, PhD, 1982

Carl is a research hydrologist at the US Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Laboratory in Vicksburg, MS where his research focus is on multi-dimensional numerical modeling of water quality, living resources, and sediment-water interactions. Carl’s current research projects include modeling eutrophication and living resources in Chesapeake Bay, St. Johns River, Florida, and Lake Washington, as well as efforts to assess the impact of flood diversion on Newark Bay and eutrophication and pathogen abatement in San Juan Bay Estuary, Puerto Rico.

A new project Carl is working on is linking the ICM water quality model to a finite element model called AdH (Adaptive Hydrodynamics). This may have application in the next generation of Chesapeake models since the finite element grid will allow the extension of the model into the smallest tributaries and more accurately follow the shoreline. Carl is also working on combining particle-based approaches with the continuum approach we currently use in the Bay and elsewhere. He was co-PI on a project to model schools of menhaden as particles and now has a small research grant from the Army Corps to model algal blooms as particles. He is currently attempting to use this approach to understand spring phytoplankton blooms in the Potomac River.

Carl has been working in the Chesapeake for more than two decades leading the Chesapeake Bay Program’s coupled hydrodynamic and water quality modeling effort. This state-of-the-art modeling system, which has been developed to help guide management and restoration efforts, simulates water column and benthic biogeochemical cycling and sediment transport. The model also includes living resources such as submerged aquatic vegetation, oysters and planktivorous fish. Carl and his colleagues have used this model to, among other things, assess the potential filtration impacts of oysters and planktivorous fish on water clarity and quality, and assess how nutrient-loading reductions might expand SAV habitat and reduce the volume of anoxic water in the mainstem Bay. Carl has collaborated closely with academic scientists from all around Chesapeake Bay to develop this complex modeling system, which is widely viewed as one of the world’s most advanced marine resource management tools. Carl is now actively engaged in helping the Bay Program and the EPA develop TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) targets for Chesapeake Bay tributaries that will be used to guide state nutrient reduction efforts.

4. Featured Model: SWAT – Soil and Water Assessment Tool

This edition we are featuring the Soil Water and Assessment Tool (SWAT). It is a prognostic, watershed/hydrological model that can be used to predict freshwater, nutrient and contaminant loads. SWAT has been in ongoing development for 30 years and its roots can be found with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. SWAT is an open source application and has an international developer and user base. It was developed to predict the impact of management on water, sediment, and agricultural chemical yields on unguaged watersheds.

SWAT is a basin scale model operating on daily time steps. A watershed is divided into sub-watersheds and then each of these sub-watersheds are sub-divided into hydrologic response units (HRUs). Each HRU features homogeneous land use, management, and soil characteristics. The major model components of SWAT are:

• Weather
• Hydrology
• Soil Temperature/Characteristics
• Plant Growth
• Nutrients
• Pesticides
• Bacteria/Pathogens
• Land Management

SWAT has been applied to investigate many different aspects of watershed management and the various factors affecting watershed sediment and chemical yield. Some of these applications have included hydrologic assessments and studies of pollutant loss and the impacts of sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus, and climate change. SWAT has also been interfaced with other models including QUAL2E and MODFLOW. GIS interfaces have been developed for SWAT which simplifies the input of basin characteristics. The first GIS interface was based on GRASS GIS and subsequent interfaces are built around the ESRI ARCgis architecture.

The SWAT website is maintained by Texas A&M University . On the SWAT website, you can download the model, documentation, and several different input and output components that have been built for SWAT. There are also links to support, conferences, and a host of other information.

Most of the information for this article was obtained from - P.W. Gassman, M.R. Reyes, C.H. Green, J.G. Arnold. 2007. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool: Historical Development, Applications, and Future Research Directions. Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. Vol. 50(4): 1211-1250. A copy can be obtained here

5. Upcoming Meetings

CBP Modeling Sub-Committee Quarterly Review Meeting

This meeting will take place January 11-12, 2011 in the Joe Macknis Memorial Conference room at the Chesapeake Bay Program from 9-4.

Chesapeake Community Model Program
http://ches.communitymodeling.org/
Chesapeake Research Consortium
Edgewater, MD
410-798-1283