Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2002FL4B

Application of a Multi-Scale, Multi-Process Hydrologic Model to the C-111 Basin in South Florida

Institute: Florida
Year Established: 2002 Start Date: 2002-03-01 End Date: 2003-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $23,622 Total Non-Federal Funds: $47,780

Principal Investigators: Andrew James, Wendy Graham, John Warwick

Project Summary: The natural hydrology of south Florida has been extensively altered though channelization to provide adequate water for urban growth and agriculture, and to provide flood protection to the area. Currently, water resource management in south Florida is governed by a number of federal, state, and county agencies. These agencies have developed or adopted hydrologic models to address a diverse set of needs. These range from large-scale models used to estimate impacts of alternative water management practices across all of south Florida, to field-scale models used to predict local impacts such as flooding or agricultural production. However, these different models are not well integrated. The primary objective of this proposed research is to apply a multiple process, multiple scale hydrologic model to the C-111 basin in south Florida. We will investigate how hydrologic processes within the C-111 basin in south Florida such as ground water flow, river/canal flow, overland flow, infiltration, evapotranspiration, etc., are manifested across a range of spatial and temporal scales. We will focus on understanding how agricultural, urban, and/or natural ecosystems in south Florida impact, and are in turn impacted by, hydrologic processes at a variety of scales. Additional objectives are to test various methods for upscaling input parameters and predictions from detailed local models, and to use this hydrologic model to investigate sensitivities of hydrologic processes to spatial and temporal variability of hydrologic parameters at different scales.