ARS | Publication request: Agricultural Wetland and Pond Hydrologic Analyses Using the Spaw Model

Submitted to: Proceedings Asae Conference Clean Water Clean Environment
Publication Acceptance Date: July 30, 2004
Publication Date: September 12, 2004
Citation: Saxton, K. E. And P. Willey. 2004 Agricultural Wetland And Pond Hydrologic Analyses Using The Spaw Model. Asae Speciality Conference Proceedings. Self-Sustaining Solutions For Streams, Wetlands And WATERSHEDS.AMERICAN Society Agricultural Engineers. 2004. Agricultural Wetland And Pond Hydrologic Analyses Using The Spaw Model. Proceedings Asae Conference Clean Water Clean Environment.

Technical Abstract: A new computer model has been developed and evaluated to simulate the hydrology of wetlands and ponds located in agricultural settings. The SPAW (Soil-Plant-Air-Water) model consists of two linked routines. The first develops field hydrologic budgets based upon daily climatic data, crop data, and hydraulic characteristics of the soil profile. The second routine utilizes the climatic and hydrologic outputs of one or more farm fields as the input to hydrologic budgets for downstream ponds or wetlands. These daily pond water budgets can be used to evaluate the performance, operation or reliability for many types of ponds and reservoirs such as irrigation or livestock water supplies, liquid waste storage facilities and inundated wetlands. The SPAW model can be used to evaluate the hydrology for a variety of agricultural wetland situations involving fields, streams, groundwater, and constructed management. The wetland budgets include watershed runoff, seepage, evaporation, spillway flows or managed inputs and withdrawals. The model is a single hydrologic computational package which includes operational and data screens, output tables and graphs, manuals and examples. Program corroboration has been accomplished through a series of site data, program tests and scientific workshops. The program theory, typical applications, data requirements and operational details are included and publicly available.