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Oke Nwaneshiudu

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WATERSHED CHARACTERIZATION using

Version 3.0: (A case study of the Bryan/College station- Brazos County region)

Project final report Submitted as partial requirements of term project and in partial fulfillment of requirements for CVEN 689

Class: CVEN 689- GIS applications in Civil Engineering Professor: Dr. Francisco Olivera Term: Spring 2003

1 Graphic courtesy of the EPA Web site

Abstract

Many localities and state agencies are moving towards using watershed based approaches. Additionally section 303(d) of the clean water act requires that states develop TMDLs for bodies of waters that are not meeting applicable water quality standards. These major reasons have spurred the Development of a GIS based program by the US Environmental Protection Agency called BASINS

The Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Nonpoint Sources (BASINS) program can be described as a user friendly GIS based GUI (graphical user interface) and analysis tool package. It was developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of water. BASINS, provides a powerful tool to facilitate analysis and examination of environmental systems and information. It also provides a good framework for decision-making and examining management alternatives. This project was primarily an analysis and characterization of the Brazos county area using a combination of utilities in Arview 3.2 and the BASINS program. Through the formation of watershed characterization reports using BASINS, key water, land and air environmental information can be identified. The watershed characterization reports that where produced included a water quality summary report. A toxic air emissions report and a land use distribution report.

Texas A&M University, Dept of Civil Engineering Spring 2003 1

Table of contents

Abstract__________________________________________________________________ 1

Introduction ______________________________________________________________ 3 Water quality summary report___________________________________________________ 4 Toxic air emission report________________________________________________________ 4 Land use (Grid) distribution report _______________________________________________ 4

Background / Literature Review ______________________________________________ 4 Land and soil Applications ______________________________________________________ 4

SWAT: Soil and Water assessment Tool (model) ___________________________________________5 Watershed Reporting: Land use distribution reporting (Assessment tool)__________________________5

Water Applications ____________________________________________________________ 5 QUAL2E (model) ____________________________________________________________________5 HSPF- Hydrological Simulation Program Fortan (model) _____________________________________5 Target (Assessment tool________________________________________________________________5 Watershed Reporting: Water quality summary reporting (Assessment tool)________________________5

Air Applications _______________________________________________________________ 6 Watershed Reporting: Toxic Air emissions reporting _________________________________________6

Methodology______________________________________________________________ 6 Data acquisition phase _________________________________________________________________6 Data preparation phase_________________________________________________________________6 Data analysis phase ___________________________________________________________________6

Results and discussions _____________________________________________________ 6 Water quality summary report___________________________________________________ 7 Toxic air emission report_______________________________________________________ 11 Land use distribution report____________________________________________________ 14

Conclusion ______________________________________________________________ 15

References ______________________________________________________________ 16

PRESENTATION: D:\Nwaneshiudu\Nwaneshiudu.ppt


Introduction

The Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Nonpoint Sources, BASINS program was conceived as a multipurpose system to assist in watershed and water quality based studies. It also supports developments of TMDLs (Total Maximum Daily Loads). Figure 1 below depicts a good overview of the BASINS system integrations utilities and tools.

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The purpose of this project was to characterize the watershed bounded within the Brazos County region which contains the Cities of Bryan / College Station. I choose to utilize BASINS 3.0, the Arc view/GIS based program to perform the different analysis and characterization of this chosen study area.

Figure 1: an overview of the BASINS program showing all tools and utilities

The main objectives of these analyses are to develop the following 3 watershed characterization reports;

1. Water quality summary report


2 Graphic courtesy of Aquaterra consultants inc’s web page

2. Toxic air emission report 3. Land use distribution report

By preparation of these reports, I can be able to identify, specific information on air, water, and land issues related to the sub watersheds contained in the Brazos county region.

Water quality summary report

Knowledge of water quality conditions in a watershed is very useful and can support various evaluation and assessment programs. This tool enables users to generate water quality data reports of chosen pollutants which where monitored in the water quality monitoring stations located throughout the watershed in a given period of time. This tool will enable me to locate all the water quality monitoring stations in the study area and query all the stations that have monitored BOD within the time periods of 1990 to 1994

Toxic air emission report

This tool aids in generating summaries of air pollutant releases from facilities which are US EPA designated TRI (Toxic Release Inventory) facilities in a given watershed. It provides a user with magnitude as well as overall watershed loading. I will also use this tool to specifically characterize and produce an emissions summary (of the year of 1995) for the air pollutant “Zinc” from all the designated TRI (Toxic Release Inventory) facilities.

Land use (Grid) distribution report

This tool is used primarily to examine different land usage in a study and will enable me to determine spatial breakdown of the land usage of the study areas.

Background / Literature Review

The BASIN program is versatile and has been used in many capacities in the analysis of environmental systems. Most of its capabilities can be seen in figure 1. However its applications in environmental engineering systems can be grouped into air, water and land applications. These applications in the BASINS program are made available in its assessment tools and its watershed and in-stream models.

Land and soil Applications

The BASINS program is outfitted with assessment and model tools which are specific to land applications and have been used for analysis pertaining to land and soil problems. Here are some of these listed below with brief descriptions of their capabilities and some sample efforts that have been done with them.


SWAT: Soil and Water assessment Tool (model) The SWAT model is one of the model tools made available through the BASINS program. It was developed as a prediction and simulation modeling tool. It predicts effects of land use management on sediment, chemical yields and on water from river basins. It also simulates important phenomenon like nutrient and pesticide cycling, hydrology, and bacteria transport. It is currently being used in projects like determining flow and chemistry variables for development of ecological indicators in stream ecosystems, a project currently being done by the Natural Resources Research Institute of the University of Minnesota.

Watershed Reporting: Land use distribution reporting (Assessment tool) With this reporting future, users can define and examine various land usage in an area that is being studied.

Water Applications

Water applications make up the greater part of the BASINS applications framework. It provides capabilities in water quality analysis and hydrologic modeling. Some of its applications in this area the following:

QUAL2E (model) This model is used for fate and transport simulation of water quality constituents under given flow conditions in streams. It has been used in projects which involved simulations of major reactions of nutrient reactions, algal production, and atmospheric reareation. It can predict up to 15 water quality constituent concentration used in analysis.

HSPF- Hydrological Simulation Program Fortan (model) This is also known as the Hydrological Simulation Program Fortan model . It was

developed by the EPA and is primarily used for estimation of nonpoint source loadings from mixed land uses.

Target (Assessment tool Target is a tool that is predominantly used for broad based evaluation of watershed

water quality involving multiple watersheds. Multiple watersheds can be ranked based on different criteria on about 50 different parameters (pollutants).

Watershed Reporting: Water quality summary reporting (Assessment tool) Provides summaries of a given pollutants that was monitored during a given period of time


Air Applications

Watershed Reporting: Toxic Air emissions reporting This tool provides a very efficient method of identifying facilities with air releases of a given pollutant at any given time. All the facilities listed are USEPA designated Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Facilities.

Methodology

The performance of the project involved mainly 3 phases; a data acquisition phase, a data preparation phase, and a data analysis phase.

Data acquisition phase The data acquisition stage mainly involved obtaining the required DEM grids, shape

files and tables from the US EPA Office of Water and organizing the data structure into a directory to make them compatible to the BASINS program.

Data preparation phase Because this was raw data, the data preparation stage involved using the Arc View

3.2 and extensions like “Spatial Analyst” and “CRWR Raster”, to understand the data, organize themes and try different kinds of analysis like merging and clipping certain features.

Data analysis phase The data analysis phase involved using the BASIN program to delineate the

watershed and performs characterization functions on the watershed. There was no data projection required because the BASINS customized data was used and its projection is usually already set.

It is important to note that the delineation of the watershed was down by the delineate tool provided in the BASINS interface. This had to be done before any characterization function could be run. The 2 DEMS where merged using CRWR Raster and the spatial analyst extensions. It should also be noted that characterization functions that were ran on merged and clipped features where not successful. This was because of poor reorganization between the algorithms in the BASINS program and the data structure of the merged and clipped features.

Results and discussions

3 watershed characterization where made for the study area which was chosen to be the Brazos county for the project. The 3 characterization reports are the following

• Water quality summary report • Toxic air emission • Land use distribution report


Water quality summary report

This is a function provided by the BASINS program that provides summaries of a given pollutant that was monitored during a specified period of time. For this project this function was ran for BOD, 5 day for the time periods of 1990 to 1994. The out put are shown below and include a Map shown in figure 2a and 2b below and 2 tables shown in tables 1a and 1b below

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Figure 2a: Map output from WQOB analysis for little Brazos watershed (cat unit #12070101)

as A&M University, Dept of Civil Engineerng 2003

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stasta

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Figure 2b: Map output from WQOB analysis Navasota watershed (cat unit #12070101)

Figure 2a and 2b are maps showing locations of all the water quality monitoring tion located all through the watershed units around the study area. It also highlights the tion(s) which had observations of BOD 5 day.

as A&M University, Dept of Civil Engineering ing 2003 8

Texas A&M University, Dept of Civil Engineering Spring 2003

Table 1a: Tables showing the details of all the water quality monitoring stations for the little Brazos (12070101) watershed. Details and locations

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Table 1b: Tables showing the details of all the water quality monitoring stations for Navasota (12070103) watershed. Details and locations

Tables 1a and 1b are showing details of all water quality monitoring stations. The second tables show more detailed focus on the particular locations that had the observations As can be seen in the first table, 20 observation where made during the specified time period. Also, the locations are within close proximity of each other because it shows on the map as one point.

Toxic air emission report

This function provides summaries of facilities with air releases at any given time. All facilities listed are USEPA designated Toxic Release Inventory facilities. For the project, this report was done for the parameter “zinc” in the year of 1995. The outputs are a map and 2 tables which are shown below in figures 3a and 3b and tables 2a and 2b.

FB

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igure 3a: Map output from TRI analysis Little razos watershed (cat unit #12070101)


dewh

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Figure 3b: Map output from TRI analysis Navasota watershed (cat unit #12070103)

The maps shown in Figure 3a and 3b are maps showing locations of all the EPA signated Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) facilities located in the study areas. The locations ich have zinc emission in the chosen year are also shown (although not clear).


Texas A&M University, DSpring 2003

Table 2a: Tables showing the details of all the TRI facilities within the Brazos (12070101) watershed. Details, locations, and status, and identification #s.

ept of Civil Engineering 13

Tables 2show more detazinc in the yearcan be noted.

Land use distr

This funwatershed. Outp

Texas A&M UniversitySpring 2003

Table 2b: Tables showing the details of all theTRI facilities within the Navasota (12070103) watershed. Details, locations, and status, and identification #s.

a and 2b are showing details of all EPA TRI facilities. The second tables iled focus on the particular facilities that had fugitive and stack emissions of

of 1995. A good number of facilities located in the Bryan college station area

ibution report

ction provides summaries of land use distributions within a selected uts a basically maps showing different land usages.

, Dept of Civil Engineering 14

Figure 4: Map output from Land use distribution report.

Conclusion

From the performance of this project, I have learnt first hand the versatility of the BASINS program, I have learnt how to use and interpret spatial data, and I have gathered information environmental information on the Brazos county region BASINS has proven to be an invaluable resource to the Environmental Engineering community.


References

I. “About BASINS”, EPA, May, 2002 http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/basins/basinsv3.htm

II. “Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Non-point Sources Version 3.0 Fact sheet”, US EPA, June 2001 http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/basins/fsversion3.PDF

III. Arc Hydro: GIS for Water Resources” Ed by David R. Maidment, published by ESRI Press, 2002, ISBN 1-58948-034-1

IV. “Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Non-point Sources Version 3.0 User's

Manual”, US EPA, #823-B-01-001 August, 2002 http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/basins/bsnsdocs.html


http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/basins/basinsv3.htm

http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/basins/fsversion3.PDF

http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/basins/bsnsdocs.html

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