Impact of wetlands mapping on parameterization of hydrologic simulation models

Abstract:

Wetlands and other surface depressions can impact hydrologic response within the landscape in a number of ways, such as intercepting runoff and near-surface flows or changing the potential for evaporation and seepage into the soil. The role of these features is increasingly being integrated into hydrological simulation models, such as the USGS Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) and the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), and applied to landscapes where wetlands are dominating features. Because the extent of these features varies widely through time, many modeling applications rely on delineations of the maximum possible extent to define total capacity of a model’s spatial response unit. This poster presents an evaluation of several wetland map delineations for the Pipestem River basin in the North Dakota Prairie-pothole region. The featured data sets include the US Fish and Wildlife Service National Wetlands Inventory (NWI), surface water bodies extracted from the US Geological Survey National Hydrography Dataset (NHD), and elevation depressions extracted from 1 meter LiDAR data for the area. In addition to characterizing differences in the quality of these datasets, the poster will assess the impact of these differences when parameters are derived from them for the spatial response units of the PRMS model.