CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Systems

By David R. Maidment

With support from many collaborators: Ilya Zaslavsky, Reza Wahadj, Chaitan Baru, Praveen Kumar, Michael Piasecki, Rick Hooper, Jon Duncan, David Tarboton, Jeff Horsburgh, Venkat Lakshmi, Chunmaio Zheng, Xu Liang, Yao Liang, Ken Reckhow, Upmanu Lall, LeRoy Poff, Dennis Lettenmaier, Barbara Minsker, ……

And many graduate students and post-docs: Venkatesh Merwade, Tim Whiteaker, Jon Goodall, Gil Strassberg, Ben Ruddell, Luis Bermudez, Bora Boran, ……

Thanks to everyone for all their help!

Ocean Sciences

CUAHSI-Hydrologic Information Systems

• CUAHSI – Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc

• Formed in 2001 as a legal entity

• Program office in Washington (5 staff)

• Rick Hooper is Executive Director

Earth Sciences

AtmosphericSciences

NSF Geosciences Directorate

UCAR

CUAHSI

Unidata

HIS

CUAHSI Member Institutions

101 Universities as of November 2005

DataHypotheses

Needs

Tools

Data

Models

Exogenous DataTechnological

Advances

CommunitySupport

Multi-DisciplinaryTeams

HydrologicSynthesis

HydrologicObservatories

MeasurementTechnology

HydrologicInformation

Systems

CommunitySupport

AdditionalHypotheses

CUAHSI HydroView Components

Environmental Cyberinfrastructure

• Part of NSF Cyberinfrastructure program

• CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Systems is one of several pilot projects – CUAHSI, CLEANER, ORION, NEON, …..

Project co-PI

Collaborator

CUAHSI HIS Partner Institutions

HIS Goals

• Hydrologic Data Access System – better access to a large volume of high quality hydrologic data

• Support for Observatories – synthesizing hydrologic data for a region

• Advancement of Hydrologic Science – data modeling and advanced analysis

• Hydrologic Education – better data in the classroom, basin-focused teaching

HIS Goals

• Hydrologic Data Access System – better access to a large volume of high quality hydrologic data

• Support for Observatories – synthesizing hydrologic data for a region

• Advancement of Hydrologic Science – data modeling and advanced analysis

• Hydrologic Education – better data in the classroom, basin-focused teaching

HIS User Assessment (Chapter 4 in Status Report)

Data Access

Science Observatorysupport

Education

Which of the four HIS goals is most important to you?

CUAHSI Hydrologic Data Access System(HDAS)

A common data window for accessing, viewing and downloading hydrologic information

USGS

NASANCDCEPA NWS

Observatory Data

CUAHSI Web Services

Web ServicesLibrary

Web application: Data PortalYour application• Excel, ArcGIS, Matlab• Fortran, C/C++, Visual Basic• Hydrologic model• …………….

Your operating system• Windows, Unix, Linux, Mac

Internet Simple Object Access Protocol

NWIS Station Information in HDAS

http://river.sdsc.edu/HDAS

Observation Site Files

Ameriflux Towers Automated Surface Observing System

USGS NWIS Stations Climate Reference Network

Observation Site Map for US

USGS NWISASOSClimate Research NetworkAmeriflux

+ others…….

Neuse Basin with all points

NWIS Streamflow and Water Quality

NWIS Groundwater

ASOS

NARR

Ameriflux

NWIS Streamflow and Water Quality

ASOSNARR

Ameriflux

Filtered Site Map

http://public.ornl.gov/ameriflux/

Building each web servicerequires a site map anda web services library

Ameriflux site map

Web services library

Ameriflux towers measure vertical fluxes of water, heat, CO2

NWIS

ArcGIS

Excel

NCAR

LTER

NAWQAStoret

NCDC

Ameriflux

Matlab

Access SAS

Fortran

Visual Basic

C/C++

CUAHSI Web Services

Some operational services

Direct and Indirect Web Services

• Direct web service– The data agency provides direct querying

ability into its archives through SOAP or OpenDAP (NCDC)

• Indirect web service– CUAHSI constructs a “web page mimic”

service, housed at SDSC, that programmatically mimics the manual use of an agency’s web pages (USGS, Ameriflux)

HydroObjects Library

• CUAHSI has developed a HydroObjects Library with web service wrappers that know where to access each web service and how to interpret its output

User Application(Excel, ArcGIS, …..)

HydroObjects Librarywith web service wrappers

for NWIS, Ameriflux, NCDC, …

Direct or Indirect web services

Web data

Standards are the Key• standards …

– Industry standards already exists:• SOAP = Simple Object Access Protocol• WSDL = Web Service Definition Language

– Hydrologic community must add their own to the mix:• HTSS = Hydrologic Time Series Service• HML = Hydrologic Markup Language

• software development …– If we adopt SOAP and WSDL standards, we can

utilize industry support– Hydrology standards will increase interoperability and

code reuse• Request SWAQ to set up an advisory committee for to

help develop CUAHSI standards for HML

Utah State Time Series Analyst(developed by Jeff Horsburgh)

http://water.usu.edu/nwisanalyst/  http://water.usu.edu/analyzer/

-- operates on CUAHSI web services-- operates on local data for Neuse basin

Transfer of research results• CUAHSI web services for NWIS were announced at a

cyberseminar on Friday Oct 28• On Wednesday Nov 2, Jason Love, from a private

firm, RESPEC, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, posted on the EPA Basins list server: “Occasionally one comes across something that is worth sharing; the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Systems - Web Services Library for NWIS is a valuable tool for those of us interested in rapidly acquiring and processing data from the USGS, e.g., calibrating models and performing watershed assessments.”

• He provided a tutorial on how to use the services from Matlab (which CUAHSI had not developed)

• Technology transfer took less than 1 week!

Impact of Web Services

• CUAHSI web data services are significantly simplifying user access to federal water observation data

• This will increase appreciation of the collective information content of these data

• Next step is to set the data in context of their environment – Digital Watershed

• Web services may turn out to be as important or even supersede web pages as a data delivery mechanism

HIS Goals

• Hydrologic Data Access System – get me the data I want quickly and painlessly

• Support for Observatories – synthesizing hydrologic data for a region

• Advancement of Hydrologic Science – data modeling and advanced analysis

• Hydrologic Education – better data in the classroom, basin-focused teaching

Digital WatershedHow can hydrologists integrate observed and

modeled data from various sources into a single description of the environment?

Digital WatershedHydrologic Observation

Data

GeospatialData

Remote SensingData

Weather and ClimateData

(NetCDF)

(GIS)(Relational database)

(EOS-HDF)

Digital Watershed

A digital watershed is a synthesis of hydrologic observation data, geospatial data, remote sensing data and weather

and climate data into a connected database for a hydrologic region

Digital Watershed:Prototype for the Neuse basin

(See Chapter 8 in the Status Report for details)

Neuse Atmospheric Water

• Daily precipitation data from NCDC gages

• Nexrad daily rainfall rasters

• Land surface – atmosphere fluxes from North American Regional Reanalysis of climate

Neuse Surface Water

• Streamflow, water quality hydrologic observational data

• GIS: River network, water bodies, watersheds, monitoring points

• Land cover, soils, • MODIS remote sensing

(Praveen Kumar and Venkat Lakshmi)

MODIS

Terrain and Land Cover

Neuse Basin: Coastal aquifer system

* From USGS, Water Resources Data Report of North Carolina for WY 2002

Section line

Beaufort Aquifer

Neuse Groundwater

Geovolumes of hydrogeologic unitsfrom US Geological survey (GMS)

GeoVolume – 3D representation of the surface and subsurface

Geovolume Geovolume with groundwater model cells

Geovolume of layered soil texture for the Neuse basin

Digital Site

• Provides the community with a systematically constructed archive of site investigations

• A means of constructive engagement with scientists on standardized databases for site scale processes

• A library of digital sites of different kinds informs digital watershed development MADE site in Mississippi

Interfacedata models

HEC-HMS

HEC-RAS

HSPF

GIS

GeoDatabase

Arc Hydrodata model

Connecting Arc Hydro and Hydrologic Models

Map2Map Workflow Model

FLOODPLAIN MAP

Flood map as output

Model for flood flow

Model for flood

depth

HMS

Nexrad rainfall map as input

DEMO

HIS Goals

• Hydrologic Data Access System – better access to a large volume of high quality hydrologic data

• Support for Observatories – synthesizing hydrologic data for a region

• Advancement of Hydrologic Science – data modeling and advanced analysis

• Hydrologic Education – better data in the classroom, basin-focused teaching

Towards a Feasible Environmental Observatory:

A Vision and an Implementation Plan

Richard P. HooperPresident, CUAHSI

CUAHSI Community Challenge

Predict flux of water and chemicals in rivers, lakes, aquifers, and estuaries continuously in time and space throughout the United States.

Created first for the Neuse basin

Digital Watershed:An implementation of the CUAHSI Hydrologic Data

Model for a particular region

CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System

National Scale (seamless, coast to

coast data coverage,ArcHydro USA)

1:500,000 scale

Regional Scale (e.g. Neuse basin)

1:100,000 scale

Watershed Scale (e.g. Trent watershed )

1:24,000 scale

Site Scale (experimental site level)

Site scale

Mul

tisca

le d

ata

deliv

ery

Multiscale web portal delivering point water observation data, GIS data, weather and climate data and remote sensing data for user selected regions in the United States

National Hydrologic Information System

Hydrologic Information System

Hydrologic Observing

System

Hydrologic Modeling System

HydroVolumes

Take a watershed and extrude it vertically into the atmosphereand subsurface

A hydrovolume is “a volume in space through which water, energy and mass flow, are stored internally, and transformed”

Watershed Hydrovolumes

Geovolume is theportion of a hydrovolumethat contains solidearth materials

USGS Gaging stations

Hydrovolume

Stream channel Hydrovolumes

Hydrologic Flux Coupler

Hydrologic Fluxes and Flows

Digital Watershed(Atmospheric, surface and subsurface water)

We want to do water,mass, energy and water balances

Hydrologic Flux Coupler

Precipitation

Evaporation

Streamflow

Define the fluxes and flows associated with each hydrovolume

Groundwater recharge

See Chapter 9 of Status Report for Details

Hydrologic Flux Coupler as an ArcGIS Workflow

Hydrologic Science

Hydrologic conditions(Fluxes, flows, concentrations)

Hydrologic Process Science(Equations, simulation models, prediction)

Hydrologic Information Science(Observations, data models, visualization

Hydrologic environment(Dynamic earth)

Physical laws and principles(Mass, momentum, energy, chemistry)

It is as important to represent hydrologic environments precisely with

data as it is to represent hydrologic processes with equations

Significant progress

Shared Data Models

Hydrology(CUAHSI)

Environmental Engineering(CLEANER)

Ecology(NEON/LTER)

Atmospheric Science(NCAR/Unidata)

Geology(GEON)

Geomorphology(NCED/WSSC)

Limnology, Ocean science, …..

ArcGIS Geographic data models

www.esri.com/datamodels

About 30 ArcGIS data models for a variety of disciplines

Geosciences Network

Atmospheric science – hydrology

• Weather and climate fields are the drivers – continuous in space and time across the nation

• Local watersheds are the reactors – each behaving according to its location and characteristics

GeoTemporal Reference Frame

• A defined geospatial coordinate system for (x,y,z)

• A defined time coordinate system (UTC, Eastern Standard Time, ….)

• A set of variables, V• Data values v(x,y,z,t)

Space (x,y,z)

Time, t

Variables, V

v – data values

Data Cube

Continuous Space-Time Model – NetCDF (Unidata)

Space, L

Time, T

Variables, V

D

Coordinate dimensions

{X}

Variable dimensions{Y}

Space, FeatureID

Time, TSDateTime

Variables, TSTypeID

TSValue

Discrete Space-Time Data ModelArcHydro

Proposed new format: GeoNetCDFContinuous Space (NetCDF)Discrete Space (GIS)

ArcGIS version 9.2(in beta release) acceptsnetCDF as a native file

format

HIS Goals

• Hydrologic Data Access System – better access to a large volume of high quality hydrologic data

• Support for Observatories – synthesizing hydrologic data for a region

• Advancement of Hydrologic Science – data modeling and advanced analysis

• Hydrologic Education – better data in the classroom, basin-focused teaching

Basin-oriented teaching

http://www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/maidment/gradhydro2005/gradhydro2005.htm

• Focus class on interpretation of a single river basin

• Interdisciplinary teaching• Water balances for each

phase of hydrologic cycle• Use Unidata Integrated

Data Viewer to access weather info

Conclusions

• HIS = a geographically distributed system of web-connected data and functions

• Hydrologic Data Access System is a significant technological innovation

• Emerging understanding of digital watershed structure and functions

• Beginnings of hydrologic information science and shared data models with neighbouring sciences