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Type: Journal Article
Author(s): Chinmay Deval; Erin S. Brooks; Mariana Dobre; Roger Lew; Peter R. Robichaud; Ames Fowler; Jan Boll; Zachary M. Easton; Amy S. Collick
Publication Date: 2022

Effective watershed management and protection of water resources from non-point source pollution require identification, prioritization, and targeting of pollutant source areas. Process-based hydrology and water quality models are powerful heuristic tools for land and water resources managers. However, because of their complexity, such models are often under-utilized as management prioritization and planning tools. In this paper, we present a prioritization, interactive visualization, and analysis tool (Pi-VAT) that is programmed to synthesize multi-scenario, multi-watershed outputs from process-based geospatial models. We demonstrate the utility of Pi-VAT to examine simulated hydrologic, sediment, and water quality response at the hillslope/hydrologic response unit (HRU) scale. We apply Pi-VAT to output from multiple watersheds and for multiple management scenarios and treatments from two geospatial models for watershed management: Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) and Soil & Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). Pi-VAT was developed using the Shiny web application framework for the R programming language. In a matter of minutes, Pi-VAT can synthesize overwhelming amounts of output from process-based models into information useful for land and water resources managers. We illustrate the use of Pi-VAT to interactively identify, quantify, and visualize areas that are most susceptible to disturbance under different scenarios and provide a synthesis approach based on land use, soil type, and slope steepness. This approach guides land and water resources managers in prioritizing the areas of the watershed that provide the maximum reduction in pollutant loads while treating the least amount of area. Pi-VAT provides a flexible reactive platform for the development of decision support tools based on process-based models intended for watershed management and research applications.

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Citation: Deval, Chinmay; Brooks, Erin S.; Dobre, Mariana; Lew, Roger; Robichaud, Peter R.; Fowler, Ames; Boll, Jan; Easton, Zachary M.; Collick, Amy S. 2022. Pi-VAT: a web-based visualization tool for decision support using spatially complex water quality model outputs. Journal of Hydrology 607:127529.

Cataloging Information

Topics:
Aquatic    Fire Effects    Mapping    Models    Planning
Regions:
Alaska    California    Eastern    Great Basin    Hawaii    Northern Rockies    Northwest    Rocky Mountain    Southern    Southwest    National
Keywords:
  • decision support tools
  • Pi-VAT - prioritization, interactive visualization, and analysis tool
  • prioritization
  • process-based models
  • SWAT - Soil Water Assessment Tool
  • targeted management
  • WEPP - Water Erosion Prediction Project
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 67302