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Modelling the Entire Great Lakes and the Ottawa River

Watershed

Nick KouwenDepartment of Civil Engineering

University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON ,Canadahttp://www.watflood.ca

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With a large amount of help from:

Environment Canada Alain Pietroniro (Watershed setup)Pierre Pellerin (Synoptic & NWM data)Champa Neal (Flow data)

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Geography Lesson

St. Mary’s R.

St. Clair R.

Detroit R.

Niagara R.

St. Lawrence R.

Superior

MichiganHuron

GB

Erie

Ontario

Ottawa R.

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WATFLOOD Features:

Primary application is flood forecasting and flood studies

Long time series for climate studies and frequency analysis

Ability to model regions from a few km2 to Millions of km2

Automated watershed setup (ENSIM, MAPMAKER, TOPAZ)

Optimal use of gridded data eg. Land cover, DEM’s, NWP model output, Radar data

Universally applicable parameter set

Fast

Very easy to use interface for routine work

Pick-up truck version

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Highlights:

ENSIM – pre and post processor

Grouped Response Units GRU’s

Wetland model – coupled river-wetland hydraulics (also bank storage)

Tracer model – flow sourcing (glaciers, groundwater, wetlands, etc.)

There are many other useful features

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EnsimHydrologic

Developed by the Canadian Hydraulics Centre CHC

Funded by Environment Canada

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Start with a DEMS. Ontario in this case

EnsimHydrologic work space

L. Huron

L. Ontario

Waterloo

Toronto

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Delineate drainage &Watersheds automatically

Specify WATFLOOD grid.

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Zoom & edit data

Extract WATFLOOD data

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Watflood Theory

GRU’s :Grouped Response Units

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Elmira LANDSAT

• 10 km grid (or whatever)

• 100 km^2 area receives equal meteorological input

• group all areas with similar hydrological characteristics within a grid for 6 hydrological computations/grid

• some people model each pixel or each field separately - ok for science, not operations (10^4 computations/grid)

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Group Response Unit- to deal with basin heterogeneity

Physically Based Streamflow

Routing

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Percent Coniferous ForestSource: USGS GLOBAL LAND COVER

CHARACTERISTICS DATA BASE

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Percent CropsSource: USGS GLOBAL LAND COVER CHARACTERISTICS DATA BASE

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Hydrological ModellingPrecipitation

Interception

Surface RunoffUnsaturated

Zone

SaturatedZone

Depression Storage

Infiltration

WettingFront

Interflow

Base Flow

Evapotranspiration

Channel Flow

Wetlands

Model executed for each land cover GRUon each Grid each Hour

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Previous experience:

Original model setup & calibration for the Grand River watershed in S. Ontario

Applications include: Columbia River N. of US Border – 50,000 km2

Mackenzie River ~ 1,7000,000 km2

Rhone, Rhine, Po and Danube rivers as part of MAP (Mesoscale Alpine Project)

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MAP (Fall 1999)

Computed flows compared to observed flows for the Danube River in Germany & Austria

Met data from the high resolution MC2 Numerical Weather Model

MC2 & WATFLOOD ~3 km grid

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Tracer Module Components

Tracer 1

Sub-basin separation

Tracer 2

Land-cover separation

Tracer 3

Rain-on-stream tracer

Tracer 4

Flow-type separation- surface

- interflow- baseflow

Tracer 5

Snow-melt as a fn(flow-type) - surface + surface melt- interflow + melt drainage- baseflow + interflow melt drainage

Tracer 6

Glacial Melt- surface

- interflow- baseflow

Tracer 0

Baseflow separation

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Model verification

E.G. Baseflow has been compared to isotope analysis of streamflow sources

All other model components have been similarly verified

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Great Lakes & Ottawa River Model

Meteorological Data: 6 hour Synoptic data for initial setup for October

2000 – August 2003 3 hour GEM (Global Environmental Model) data

for July & August 2003

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Movie clip is an example of distributed Synoptic Data

(Note the moving Bull’s eyes)

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Synoptic data

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Next movie clip is for July 2003 using GEM data

(GEM is Canada’s operational weather forcasting model)

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Animation of Snow Cover (SWE in mm)

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Animation ofGrid Outflow

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Flow stations: Canada only (to date)

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Computed hydrographs for50 Sub-Watersheds 400-13500 km2

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Lake Routing

St. Mary’s R.

St. Clair R.

Detroit R.

Niagara R.

St. Lawrence R.

Superior

MichiganHuron

GB

Erie

Ontario

Ottawa R.

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Lake Routing Rules (natural state):

St. Marys RiverQ = 824.7*(SUP-181.43)^1.5

St. Clair RiverQ = 82.2*((MHU+STC)/2-166.98)^1.87*(MHU-STC)^0.36

Detroit RiverQ = 28.8*(STC-164.91)^2.28*(STC-ERI)^0.305

Niagara River Q = 558.3*(ERI-169.86)^1.60

St. Lawrence River Q =555.823*(Oswego-0.0014(Year-1985)-69.474)^1.5

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Needs work. Ave. lake levels are ok. Variation is inadequate.Effect of weeds, ice & operations not yet incorporated.

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Summary Great tools are required to model large areas such as the

Great Lakes & Ottawa River basin. Pre-processor – set up watershed files Post-processor – debugging & visualization

GRU’s ensure vastly different hydrological units are represented appropriately at the large scale

Gridded model Efficient ingestion of gridded data: DEM, Land cover,

meteorological data (radar, numerical weather models)

Much tweaking to be done!