Abstract
For almost 30 years, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been successfully implemented to address issues around various scientific subjects in the world. On the other hand, it has been reaching to the limit of potential flexibility in further development by the current structure. The new generation SWAT, dubbed SWAT+, was released recently with entirely new coding features. SWAT+ is designed to have far more advanced functions and capacities to handle challenging watershed modeling tasks for hydrologic and water quality processes. However, it is still inevitable to conduct model calibration before the SWAT+ model is applied to engineering projects and research programs. The primary goal of this study is to develop an open-source, easy-to-operate automatic calibration tool for SWAT+, dubbed IPEAT+ (Integrated Parameter Estimation and Uncertainty Analysis Tool Plus). There are four major advantages: (i) Open-source code to general users; (ii) compiled and integrated directly with SWAT+ source code as a single executable; (iii) supported by the SWAT developer group; and, (iv) built with efficient optimization technique. The coupling work between IPEAT+ and SWAT+ is fairly simple, which can be conducted by users with minor efforts. IPEAT+ will be regularly updated with the latest SWAT+ revision. If users would like to integrate IPEAT+ with various versions of SWAT+, only few lines in the SWAT+ source code are required to be updated. IPEAT+ is the first automatic calibration tool integrated with SWAT+ source code. Users can take advantage of the tool to pursue more cutting-edge and forward-thinking scientific questions.
Highlights
To better represent hydrologic and nutrient processes in natural systems, watershed simulation models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) [1], WetQual [2], AgriculturalPolicy/Environmental eXtender (APEX) [3], and Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF) [4], have been intensively developed and implemented in various scientific projects in the past 30 years.Among the commonly adopted models, the SWAT model is one of the most popular platforms which generated thousands of peer-reviewed publications in academic community (SWAT Literature Database for Peer-Reviewed Articles; https://www.card.iastate.edu/swat_articles/INDEX.ASPX)
The SWAT model was developed in the early 1990s by the United States Department of Agriculture—Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) to address the fate of pollutants caused by anthropogenic activities, especially nonpoint sources pollution (NPS) [1]
For general users, IPEAT+ is a convenient program in which automatic calibration functions are provided along with SWAT+ executable in one piece
Summary
To better represent hydrologic and nutrient processes in natural systems, watershed simulation models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) [1], WetQual [2], AgriculturalPolicy/Environmental eXtender (APEX) [3], and Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF) [4], have been intensively developed and implemented in various scientific projects in the past 30 years.Among the commonly adopted models, the SWAT model is one of the most popular platforms which generated thousands of peer-reviewed publications in academic community (SWAT Literature Database for Peer-Reviewed Articles; https://www.card.iastate.edu/swat_articles/INDEX.ASPX). To better represent hydrologic and nutrient processes in natural systems, watershed simulation models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) [1], WetQual [2], Agricultural. Before one can apply SWAT for actual practices such as assigning conservation scenarios or investigating climate change impacts, the corresponding model parameters should be properly adjusted in model calibration processes to reflect watershed systems [13,14,15,16,17]. A complex watershed simulation model like SWAT comes along with a large number of undefined model parameters, whereas the ordinary manual calibration approach may not well serve some projects in a timely matter (note that manual calibration approach is so far the best way for modelers to understand detailed model processes). Programs and software are available for users to carry through calibration routines such as SWAT-CUP [18] and IPEAT
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