Applications of the SWAT Model Special Section: Overview and Insights

Abstract

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model has emerged as one of the most widely used water quality watershed-and river basin-scale models worldwide, applied extensively for a broad range of hydrologic and/or environmental problems. The international use of SWAT can be attributed to its flexibility in addressing water resource problems, extensive networking via dozens of training workshops and the several international conferences that have been held during the past decade, comprehensive online documentation and supporting software, and an open source code that can be adapted by model users for specific application needs. The catalyst for this special collection of papers was the 2011 International SWAT Conference & Workshops held in Toledo, Spain, which featured over 160 scientific presentations representing SWAT applications in 37 countries. This special collection presents 22 specific SWAT-related studies, most of which were presented at the 2011 SWAT Conference; it represents SWAT applications on five different continents, with the majority of studies being conducted in Europe and North America. The papers cover a variety of topics, including hydrologic testing at a wide range of watershed scales, transport of pollutants in northern European lowland watersheds, data input and routing method effects on sediment transport, development and testing of potential new model algorithms, and description and testing of supporting software. In this introduction to the special section, we provide a synthesis of these studies within four main categories: (i) hydrologic foundations, (ii) sediment transport and routing analyses, (iii) nutrient and pesticide transport, and (iv) scenario analyses. We conclude with a brief summary of key SWAT research and development needs.Applications of the SWAT Model Special Section: Overview and Insights Philip W. Gassman,* Ali M. Sadeghi, and Raghavan Srinivasan H ydrological and water quality simulation models are being used increasingly to address an extensive array of water resource problems across the globe, including the effects of alternative best management practices (BMPs) and future climate change on streamflow and water quality. A plethora of such simulation models have been developed in recent decades to address various water quantity and water quality problems. These models are designed to operate across a range of scales (e.g., field versus watershed) and environmental conditions, and with varying levels of input data and model structure complexity. Dozens of review studies have been compiled that provide comparisons of either specific components or complete modeling packages for various subsets of existing water quality models (e.g., Borah et al., 2006;Breuer et al., 2008;Refsgaard et al., 2010;Daniel et al., 2011).The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model (Arnold et al., 1998;Williams et al., 2008) has emerged as one of the most widely used water quality watershed-and river basin-scale models worldwide, representing multiple decades of model development (Gassman...

Comparison of three regionalization techniques for predicting streamflow in ungaged watersheds in Nebraska, USA using SWAT model

“…This marked improvement in model performance compared to simulations under the default mode emphasizes the importance of model calibration. This outcome is also consistent with previous summaries of SWAT streamflow statistical results across multiple studies, which revealed that the majority of computed monthly (and daily) statistics satisfied suggested criteria for satisfactorily replicating corresponding observed streamflows [42,43] .…”

Estimativa do balanço hídrico de uma sub-bacia da Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Ipanema com o Modelo SWAT

“…Muitos desses modelos necessitam de uma quantidade grande de informações sobre parâmetros físicos da bacia e dos solos, cujas informações podem ser construídas com o auxílio de técnicas de SIG. Dentre os inúmeros modelos existentes atualmente, um dos mais utilizados em todo o mundo é o Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) (Bressiani et al, 2015;Arnold et al, 2012;Santos, 2015;Gassman et al, 2014;Pagliero et al, 2014;, Srinivasan et al, 2009.…”

Spatiotemporal response of the water cycle to land use conversions in a typical hilly–gully basin on the Loess Plateau, China

“…The SWAT-modeled hydrological cycle is based on the water balance, as documented by Arnold et al (1998). SWAT has been widely tested and successfully used to explore the effects of climate and land use/management changes on watershed hydrology and water quality (Nyeko, 2015;Panagopoulos et al, 2011;Douglas-Mankin et al, 2010;Zhang et al, 2013;Bosch et al, 2010;Wu and Chen, 2013;Xu et al, 2012;Zhang et al, 2008Zhang et al, , 2011Qiu et al, 2012;Gassman et al, 2014). Detailed descriptions of the mechanisms and structure of the SWAT model can be found elsewhere (Neitsch et al, 2011;Arnold et al, 2012).…”