Assessment of NASA’s Physiographic and Meteorological Datasets as Input to HSPF and SWAT Hydrological Models

Abstract

This chapter documents the use of simulated Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer land use/land cover (MODIS 12 Q1), NASA-LIS generated precipitation and evapo-transpiration (ET), and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) datasets (in conjunction with standard land use, topographical and meteorological datasets) as input to hydrological models routinely used by the watershed hydrology modeling community. The study is focused in coastal watersheds in the Mississippi Gulf Coast, although one of the test cases focuses in an inland watershed located in northeastern Mississippi, USA. The decision support tools (DSTs) into which the NASA datasets were assimilated were the Soil Water & Assessment Tool (SWAT) and the Hydrological Simulation Program Fortran (HSPF). These DSTs are endorsed by several US government agencies (EPA, FEMA, USGS) for water resources management strategies. These models use physiographic and meteorological data extensively. Precipitation gages and USGS gage stations in the region were used to calibrate several HSPF and SWAT model applications. Land use and topographical datasets were swapped to assess model output sensitivities. NASA-LIS meteorological data were introduced in the calibrated model applications for simulation of watershed hydrology for a time period in which no weather data were available (1997-2006). The performance of the NASA datasets in the context of hydrological modeling was assessed through comparison of measured and model-simulated hydrographs. Overall, NASA datasets were as useful as standard land use, topographical, and meteorological datasets. Moreover, NASA datasets were used for performing analyses that the standard datasets could not made possible, e.g., introduction of land use dynamics into hydrological simulations.