BASINS 2.0 and The Trinity River Basin

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BASINS 2.0andThe Trinity River Basin

• By Jóna Finndís Jónsdóttir

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Outline
Why this project? Area of study What is BASINS
2.0 Running NPSM Conclusions
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Lets talk about TMDL
My research project is a part of a Total Maximum
Daily Loads project on the Trinity River Basin in
east Texas
BASINS 2.0 is sometimes used to view and process
data regarding TMDL projects
Since the product of my research project will be
used in a similar way as the data in BASINS, a
quick inspection of the program will give me a
better overview over my research
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And the study area is
Or actually a part of the Trinity River
Basin First I was looking at the West Fork
Trinity River Above Bridgeport Reservoir, segment
number 812
The river network was to complicated for the
non-point source model
My next choice was Clear Fork Trinity River Above
Lake Weatherford, segment number 833
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Better Assessment Science IntegratingPoint and
Nonpoint Sources

• The BASINS system is basically an Arc View
  project with some extra components.
• It consists of
• An environmental database
• Tools for data queries and report generation
• Ability to produce input files for three models
• The models, NPSM, Qual2e and Toxiroute
• Post-processors for viewing of outputs from the
  models

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The Database

• Environmental Monitoring Data
• Water Quality Monitoring Stations and Data
  summaries
• Bacteria Monitoring Stations and Sata Summaries
• Water Quality Stations and Observation Data
• National Sediment Inventory Stations and Database
• Listing of Fish and Wildlife Advisories
• Flow Gage Sites
• Weather Station Sites
• Drinking Water Supply Sites
• Watershed Data Stations and Database
• Classified Shellfish Areas

• Base Cartographic Data
• Hydrologic Unit Boundaries
• Major Roads
• Populated Place Locations
• Urbanized Areas
• State and County Boundaries
• EPA Regions

• Environmental Background Data
• Ecoregions
• State soil and Geographic Database
• Reach file 1
• Reach file 3
• Digital Elevation Model
• Land Use and Land Cover

• Point Source/Loading Data
• Permit Compliance System, Sites Computed
  Annual Loadings
• Industrial Facilities Discharge Sites Pollutant
  Release data
• Superfund National Priority List Site
• Resource Conservation Recovery Information
  System Sites
• Minerals Availability System /Mineral Industry
  Location System

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Data Queries and Report Generation
Target performs a broad-based assessment on the
entire project area
Assess is used to assess data on an individual
watershed or a limited set of watersheds
Data mining generates dynamic links between
tables and maps for individual water quality
stations or permitted facility discharges
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The Stream Water Quality Models
Two simple one-dimensional, steady-state models
are are within BASINS, QUAL2E and
TOXIROUTE BASINS creates input files for these
models and has an built-in visualization for
their output files.
QUAL2E uses complex algorithms to simulate
biochemical oxygen demand, dissolved oxygen,
temperature, conservative and non-conservative
substances
Does not run in Windows NT
TOXIROUTE calculates final and average
concentration of general water quality
constituents based on a dilution and first-order
decay algorithm
Will not be included in next edition of BASINS
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Nonpoint Source ModelNPSM
NPSM is capable of integrating both ? Nonpoint
source runoff and associated pollutant
loadings ? Point source discharges
BASINS can create an input file for the model,
which describes the attributes of a selected
watershed The input file describes The river
reach network length, slope and flow/water level
curves (from Rf1) The land use of
watersheds Point source discharges A separate
data file includes weather data from certain
weather stations
In the NPSM-postprocessor, measured data can be
compared to the output from the model
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Running NPSM
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Running NPSM (continued)
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Output from NPSM
USGS Flow Gage Station Surface Water Quality
Station
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Conclusions
The BASINS system is in most ways interesting and
easy to use
Except for the models
The fact that QUAL2E is not compatible with
Windows NT should be presented in a more obvious
way than it is (one sentence in the users guide)
NPSM should give the user some error messages or
instructions when the model can not run due to
some mistakes in the input
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Questions?