Quick, reproducible and automatic watershed modeling with the SHUD:
Essential data, simulation, applications and visualization
Abstract
The Solver of Hydrological Unstructured Domain (SHUD) is an integrated
multi-process, multi-scale, multi-timestep hydrologic model where the
dominant hydrological processes are fully coupled using the
semi-discrete Finite Volume Method. The hydrologic processes in land
surface, aquifer and river are fully coupled and solved together. The
high spatial and temporal resolution in SHUD provides detailed and
reliable hydrologic metrics in a watershed. The SHUD System consists of
SHUD (the hydrologic model) and SHUDtoolbox (a data processing tool
kit). The new SHUD system provides capabilities for public data
downloads, pre-processing, hydrologic modeling, automatic calibration,
post-processing and spatial visualization, and is fully open-source and
ready for hydrological modelers to use. Here we introduce the philosophy
of SHUD, from perceptual to computational structures of watershed
hydrology, and select two watersheds (one in Africa and the other in
California) as examples to demonstrate the workflow and capabilities of
SHUD System. In modeling these examples, we exploit national/global
public datasets and exemplify the data management, hydrologic analysis,
model calibration and visualization capabilities. This modeling system
not only supports quick deployment of hydrologic modeling functionality,
but also benefits community modeling in other hydrology-related research
fields, such as limnology, agriculture, climate change and
Coupled-Natural-Human systems.