South Fork Eel River Watershed Analysis PDF Download

Water holds a fundamental part of human existence. Water resources, especially freshwater resources, are not only in storage around the world but also unevenly distributed. Because of human behavior, climate change, and economic and social developments, water withdrawals and supplies have been changing momentously within recent times. The three primary reasons causing an increase in water consumption are agricultural usage, industrial and power generation usage, and domestic usage. While the total water demand has been growing, water supplies have been strongly, and sometimes adversely, influenced by climate change and human activities. Under these circumstances, the necessity of developing a model capable of analyzing and predicting the water availability within basins of interest, while incorporating spatial elements and heterogeneities as well as atmospheric changes, is crucial. This research study focused on assessing the water supply conditions and water availability within the South Fork Eel River watershed in California by modeling the surface flows through employing the Watershed Environmental Hydrology (WEHY) model. Primarily, the WEHY model uses upscaled hydrologic conservation equations to represent the environmental and hydrologic processes on the temporal and spatial level. The physically based parameters of the WEHY model make possible the scheming of the impact of heterogeneity within natural watersheds. In this study, a geographic information system (GIS) database, formed by the digital elevation model (DEM) map, the land use map, the soil map, along with other spatial maps and land observation data, was first established based on the investigation performed. Then the hydrologic module of the WEHY model was selected for the hydrologic modeling of the South Fork Eel River watershed and was configured over the watershed. A system of model computational units (MCUs) and stream reaches served as the essential elements of the WEHY model. Applying the model control parameters and routing parameters, the WEHY model was then successfully calibrated and validated over the watershed by comparing the simulation results against historical data. The validated model was then used to reconstruct the historical flow discharges within the South Fork Eel River watershed, which allowed the assessment of the trends and the water availability within the basin during the past few decades. Moreover, with a good validation result, further projections of the South Fork Eel River watershed become possible using the calibrated and validated WEHY model.