Abstract
The Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program (WASP) helps users interpret and predict water quality responses to natural phenomena and manmade pollution for various pollution management decisions. WASP is a dynamic compartment-modeling program for aquatic systems, including both the water column and the underlying benthos. WASP allows the user to investigate 1, 2 and 3 dimensional systems and a variety of pollutant types—including both conventional pollutants (e.g., dissolved oxygen, nutrients, phytoplankton, etc.) and toxic materials. WASP has capabilities of linking with hydrodynamic and watershed models which allows for multi-year analyses under varying meteorological and environmental conditions. WASP was originally developed by HydroScience, Inc. in 1970 and was later adapted by the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Large Lakes Research Station (LLRS) for applications to the Great Lakes. The LLRS first publicly released the model in 1981. WASP has undergone continuous development since that time and this year will mark its 50th anniversary. This paper follows the development of WASP from its origin to the latest release of the model in 2020, documenting its evolution and present structure and capabilities.
Highlights
The first public domain release of the Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program (WASP) by the United States (US) Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Environmental Research Laboratory-Duluth (ERL-D) Large Lakes Research Station [1], set out its guiding philosophy and approach: “The application of mathematical modeling techniques to water quality problems has proved to be a powerful tool in water resource management
A number of efforts were underway by the U.S and Canada to assess the extent and impacts of eutrophication and international agreements developed for nutrient reduction
WASP was distributed with a companion program, the Model Verification Program (MVP) which computed statistics to aid in assessing model predictions
Summary
The first public domain release of the Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program (WASP) by the United States (US) Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Environmental Research Laboratory-Duluth (ERL-D) Large Lakes Research Station [1], set out its guiding philosophy and approach:. Engineering insight and political and socio-economic concerns play important roles in water resource management, some water quality problems are of such a highly complex nature that the predictive capability of mathematical models provides the only real means for screening the myriad number of management alternatives.”. This is just as true today as in 1981. That WASP has remained in continuous use can be attributed in large part to its original generalized theoretical and computational design and modular program logic This allowed its application to dynamic (time-variable) prediction of a wide variety of water quality constituents over a variety of spatial and temporal scales. 1970 and first released to the public domain in 1981 [1]
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