Sunday, July 18, 2010

WARMF update

Hey team,
I few weeks ago I spent a bunch of time trying to set up the WARMF model using BASINS. It was definitely a learning experience, and didn't go nearly as smoothly as I was hoping for. BASINS is a pretty cool program and automatically downloads just a ton of information for you, including met data, air deposition, and stream gauge data, so you don't have to go out to different agencies and do it yourself. So Amibeth, no need to get any more met data, I have it all, and Arturo's WARMF guide does a good job of explaining how to import it and edit it so WARMF can use it. You have a choice between running WARMF in hourly or daily timesteps, and so I think I'll do hourly, and it says it'll work fine if we combine hourly met data with daily hydrograph data.
By now I have the subbasin layer, the stream layer, and land use in the WARMF model, and I'll work on getting met and stream gauge data in soon, I don't think it's very difficult, but maybe a little time consuming if we are using many different data points. I'm heading up to Sierra National Forest for another 8 days starting tomorrow, camped here, with an amazing view of snowy mountains in the distance and big trees everywhere. The job so far is just inventorying roads, and is fairly monotonous and not too educational, even though being in the mountains during the summer is nice.
Hopefully when I get the WARMF model set up a little more and actually running, I will be able to know what data we need to enter it, and the best way to create all our different scenarios, but it will take a long time to figure out how to do all that, so don't expect too much for awhile. WARMF is always crashing, and a lot of times it doesn't let me recover the saved version and I have to import everything again, which takes like 30 minutes, very frustrating. I hope everyone's summer is going well,
Later,
Nick