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ARS Home » Plains Area » Temple, Texas » Grassland Soil and Water Research Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #309540
Title: C-SWAT: The Soil and Water Assessment Tool with consolidated input files in alleviating computational burden of recursive simulations

Author
item YEN, HAW - Texas Agrilife Research
item BAILEY, R - Texas A&M University
item ARABI, M - Texas A&M University
item AHMADI, MEHDI - Texas A&M University
item White, Michael
item Arnold, Jeffrey

Submitted to: Computers and Geosciences
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/31/2014
Publication Date: 11/10/2014
Publication URL: http://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/60549
Citation: Yen, H., Bailey, R.T., Arabi, M., Ahmadi, M., White, M.J., Arnold, J.G. 2014. C-SWAT: The Soil and Water Assessment Tool with consolidated input files in alleviating computational burden of recursive simulations. Computers and Geosciences. 72(2014):221-232.

Interpretive Summary: The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a widely used natural resource simulation model. The current version of the model requires the reading of a large number of individual input files, a cumbersome and time-consuming task. In this study, the Consolidated SWAT (C-SWAT) was developed to drastically reduce the number of required input files. C-SWAT was tested in the Little Washita River Basin. C-SWAT was found to be considerably faster than the current SWAT version.

Technical Abstract: The temptation to include model parameters and high resolution input data together with the availability of powerful optimization and uncertainty analysis algorithms has significantly enhanced the complexity of hydrologic and water quality modeling. However, the ability to take advantage of sophisticated models is hindered in those models that need a large number of input files, such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The process of reading large amount of input files containing spatial and computational units used in SWAT is cumbersome and time-consuming. In this study, the Consolidated SWAT (C-SWAT) was developed to consolidate 13 groups of SWAT input files from subbasin and Hydrologic Response Unit (HRU) levels into a single file for each category. The utility of the consolidated inputs of model is exhibited for auto-calibration of the Little Washita River Basin (611 km2). The results of this study show that the runtime of the SWAT model could be reduced considerably with consolidating input files. The advantage of the proposed method was further promoted with application of the optimization method using a parallel computing technique. The concept is transferrable to other models that store input data in hundreds or thousands of files.