Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID ND-2024-Chu-2

Incorporating wetland characteristics in watershed-scale hydrologic modeling in depression-dominated areas

Institute: North Dakota
Year Established: 2024 Start Date: 2024-09-01 End Date: 2025-08-31
Total Federal Funds: $9,400 Total Non-Federal Funds: $9,795

Principal Investigators: Xuefeng Chu

Project Summary: This study will provide an integrated wetland-hydrology modeling framework, which can be used to address the problems of wetland loss and water quality deterioration in North Dakota (ND). Assessing the impacts of wetland restoration is crucial because of the significant role of wetlands in hydrologic processes. In semi-distributed hydrologic models, it is difficult to account for the impacts of wetlands on hydrologic processes, especially for depression-dominated watersheds with numerous wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region. To address this issue, the concept of hydrologic response units (HRUs) used in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool will be employed and redefined by taking into account the spatial distributions of wetlands and their associated contributing areas. The redefined HRUs will be classified as (1) depressional HRUs and (2) regular HRUs. A new HRU-level wetland module will be developed to incorporate the influences of individual small wetlands for all depressional HRUs.