The Watershed Architecture of the Mississippi River Basin

2021 ◽  
pp. 205301962198908
Author(s):  
Derek Hoeferlin
Keyword(s):  
River Basin ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
River Basins ◽  
Mississippi River Basin ◽  
River Systems ◽  
Design Decisions ◽  
Anthropogenic Stressors ◽  
Object Of Study

Designers have a three-part responsibility owed to their object of study: to appreciate, to speculate, and to collaborate. This is particularly true for the professional engagement with spaces on the scale of river basins which impact and prioritize certain design decisions on a whole different level. Adequate responses to the ongoing transformations brought forward by large-scale anthropogenic stressors across entire river systems cannot continue to be dominated with hardline and static interventions. Rather, there is a need for alternative outsets, one that begins to design with adaptive and dynamic negotiations. By looking at the example of the Mississippi River Basin, this essay proposes a new integrated water-based design methodology titled “Way Beyond Bigness: The Need for a Watershed Architecture,” an interdisciplinary strategy to rethink the management of river systems for a sustainable future.

scholarly journals Integrating Multi-Media Models to Assess Nitrogen Losses from the Mississippi River Basin to the Gulf of Mexico

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongping Yuan ◽  
Ruoyu Wang ◽  
Ellen Cooter ◽  
Limei Ran ◽  
Prasad Daggupati ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
River Basins ◽  
Large River ◽  
System Level ◽  
Mississippi River Basin ◽  
Large River Basins

Abstract. This study describes and implements an integrated, multimedia, process-based system-level approach to estimating nitrogen (N) fate and transport in large river basins. The modeling system includes the following components: 1) Community Multi-Scale Air Quality (CMAQ); 2) Water Research and Forecasting (WRF); 3) Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC); and 4) Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The previously developed Fertilizer Emission Scenario Tool for the Community Multiscale Air Quality (FEST-C) system integrated EPIC with the WRF model and CMAQ. FEST-C, driven by process-based WRF weather simulations, includes atmospheric N additions to agricultural cropland, and agricultural cropland contributions to ammonia emissions. Watershed hydrology and water quality models need to be integrated with the system (FEST-C), however, so it can be used in large river basins to address impacts of fertilization, meteorology, and atmospheric N deposition on water quality. Objectives of this paper are to describe how to expand the previous effort by integrating a watershed model with the FEST-C (CMAQ/WRF/EPIC) modeling system, as well as demonstrate application of the Integrated Modeling System (IMS) to the Mississippi River Basin (MRB) to simulate streamflow and dissolved N loadings to the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). IMS simulation results generally agree with USGS observations/estimations; the annual simulated streamflow is 218.9 mm and USGS observation is 211.1 mm and the annual simulated dissolved N is 2.1 kg/ha. and the USGS estimation is 2.8 kg/ha. Integrating SWAT with the CMAQ/WRF/EPIC modeling system allows for its use within large river basins without losing EPIC’s more detailed biogeochemistry processes, which will strengthen assessment of impacts of future climate scenarios, regulatory and voluntary programs for nitrogen oxide air emissions, and land use and land management on N transport and transformation in large river basins.

scholarly journals Leveraging River Network Topology and Regionalization to Expand SWOT-Derived River Discharge Time Series in the Mississippi River Basin

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1590
Author(s):  
Cassandra Nickles ◽  
Edward Beighley
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Area Ratio ◽  
River Network ◽  
Drainage Area ◽  
Ratio Method ◽  
Mississippi River Basin ◽  
Hydrologic Modelling

The upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will measure rivers wider than 50–100 m using a 21-day orbit, providing river reach derived discharges that can inform applications like flood forecasting and large-scale hydrologic modelling. However, these discharges will not be uniform in time or coincident with those of neighboring reaches. It is often assumed discharge upstream and downstream of a river location are highly correlated in natural conditions and can be transferred using a scaling factor like the drainage area ratio between locations. Here, the applicability of the drainage area ratio method to integrate, in space and time, SWOT-derived discharges throughout the observable river network of the Mississippi River basin is assessed. In some cases, area ratios ranging from 0.01 to 100 can be used, but cumulative urban area and/or the number of dams/reservoirs between locations decrease the method’s applicability. Though the mean number of SWOT observations for a given reach increases by 83% and the number of peak events captured increases by 100%, expanded SWOT sampled time series distributions often underperform compared to the original SWOT sampled time series for significance tests and quantile results. Alternate expansion methods may be more viable for future work.

scholarly journals Integrating multimedia models to assess nitrogen losses from the Mississippi River basin to the Gulf of Mexico

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (23) ◽  
pp. 7059-7076 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongping Yuan ◽  
Ruoyu Wang ◽  
Ellen Cooter ◽  
Limei Ran ◽  
Prasad Daggupati ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Swat Model ◽  
River Basins ◽  
Large River ◽  
System Level ◽  
Mississippi River Basin ◽  
Large River Basins

Abstract. This study describes and implements an integrated, multimedia, process-based system-level approach to estimating nitrogen (N) fate and transport in large river basins. The modeling system includes the following components: (1) Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ), (2) Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF), (3) Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC), and (4) Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The previously developed Fertilizer Emission Scenario Tool for CMAQ (FEST-C), an advanced user interface, integrated EPIC with the WRF model and CMAQ. The FEST-C system, driven by process-based WRF weather simulations, includes atmospheric N additions to agricultural cropland and agricultural cropland contributions to ammonia emissions. This study focuses on integrating the watershed hydrology and water quality model with FEST-C system so that a full multimedia assessment on water quality in large river basins to address impacts of fertilization, meteorology, and atmospheric N deposition on water quality can be achieved. Objectives of this paper are to describe how to expand the previous effort by integrating the SWAT model with the FEST-C (CMAQ/WRF/EPIC) modeling system, as well as to demonstrate application of the Integrated Modeling System (IMS) to the Mississippi River basin (MRB) to simulate streamflow and dissolved N loadings to the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). IMS simulation results generally agree with US Geological Survey (USGS) observations/estimations; the annual simulated streamflow is 218.9 mm and USGS observation is 211.1 mm and the annual simulated dissolved N is 2.1 kg ha−1 and the USGS estimation is 2.8 kg ha−1. Integrating SWAT with the CMAQ/WRF/EPIC modeling system allows for its use within large river basins without losing EPIC's more detailed biogeochemistry processes, which will strengthen the assessment of impacts of future climate scenarios, regulatory and voluntary programs for N oxide air emissions, and land use and land management on N transport and transformation in large river basins.

scholarly journals Surface Water and Energy Budgets for the Mississippi River Basin in Three NCEP Reanalyses

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 857-873 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rongqian Yang ◽  
Michael Ek ◽  
Jesse Meng
Keyword(s):  
Surface Water ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Department Of Energy ◽  
Energy Budgets ◽  
Mississippi River Basin ◽  
Surface Parameterization ◽  
Seasonal Runoff

Abstract Surface water and energy budgets from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction–U.S. Department of Energy (NCEP–DOE) Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP-II) Global Reanalysis 2 (GR2), the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), and the NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) are compared here with each other and with available observations over the Mississippi River basin. The comparisons in seasonal cycle, interannual variation, and annual mean over a 31-yr period show that there are a number of noticeable differences and similarities in the large-scale basin averages. Warm season precipitation and runoff in the GR2 are too large compared to the observations, and seasonal surface water variation is small. By contrast, the precipitation in both NARR and CFSR is more reasonable and in better agreement with the observation, although the corresponding seasonal runoff is very small. The main causes of the differences in both surface parameterization and approach used in assimilating the observed precipitation datasets and snow analyses are then discussed. Despite the discrepancies in seasonal water budget components, seasonal energy budget terms in the three reanalyses are close to each other and to available observations. The interannual variations in both water and energy budgets are comparable. This study shows that the CFSR achieves a large improvement over the GR2, indicating that the CFSR dataset can be used in climate variability studies. Nonetheless, improved land surface parameterization schemes and data assimilation techniques are needed to depict the surface water and energy climates better, in particular, the variation in seasonal runoff.

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