2023

Water is complicated, especially in complex watersheds developed to meet municipal, agricultural, industrial, and flood control needs. It can come from stream channels, reservoirs, and aquifers, and it can be used to serve the needs of cities, industries, agricultural irrigation, transportation, a biodiverse environment, and flood control.

In recent months Dr. Jeff Arnold has been enhancing the water allocation components of SWAT+ to help users easily specify from where, to where, and how much water moves between these many potential sources and destinations. SWAT+ users can now use the model’s water allocation table to specify sources, destinations, anticipated amounts, and limits of water (and contaminant) movement between water sources and destinations. This will allow users to more easily and realistically simulate alternative scenarios of water allocation in complex watersheds with multiple water sources and uses.

The enhanced version of SWAT+ is currently being evaluated by several users in Europe, India, and the United States, and we anticipate that it will soon be available on the SWAT+ website.

For several years Dr. Phil Gassman of Iowa State University has led an effort to continuously update and maintain the database of SWAT-related publications found on the SWAT website. He has just informed us that in October the number of peer-reviewed publications in the database has exceeded 6,000! Dr. Gassman’s team, which includes an undergraduate student at ISU, is still updating the database for 2022 and 2023. He anticipates that the final count for 2022 will exceed 600, which reflects an ongoing trend that began almost a decade ago of SWAT publications exceeding “one per day”. Also, it is quite likely that some SWAT-related publications from earlier years have been missed, especially if they were not published in English. In addition, Dr. Gassman reports that almost 900 journals are currently represented in the database! What a record! Congratulations and thanks to all SWAT users and developers for helping make SWAT the most widely used model of its kind worldwide! 

Please consider uploading citation data from published, peer-reviewed articles that you have co-authored, after confirming that the article has not already been indexed in the database. There is an increasing need for members of the global user community to participate in the process of uploading citation data, to maintain the long-term viability of the database.

Congratulations and thanks to all SWAT users and developers for helping make SWAT the most widely used model of its kind worldwide!

UNGA 78 | MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2023 – 1:00 – 3:15 PM | NEW YORK

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For over a decade Brazilian university faculty and government agency specialists have been enthusiastic SWAT users and influencers, supporting graduate students that have developed numerous SWAT models. Among the most active SWAT leaders have been Dr. Josicleda Galvicio (Federal University of Pernambuco), Dr. Suzana Gico Montenegro (Federal University of Pernambuco), Dr. Rodrigo de Queiroga Miranda (Federal University of Pernambuco), Dr. Danielle Bressiani (Federal University of Pelotas), and Dr. E. Mario Mendiondo (University of Sao Paulo). These leaders of the Brazilian SWAT community and their students have authored numerous peer-reviewed publications involving the use of SWAT, were key to organizing and hosting the 2014 International SWAT Conference in Porto de Galinhas (Ipojuca), Pernambuco, and have offered regular SWAT short courses and workshops throughout Brazil. For the 2014 conference Dr. Danielle presented a review of SWAT applications in Brazil, and a quick search of the SWAT publications website for “Brazil” found a total of 168 SWAT-related articles in the last 10 years. In addition, over the last several years Drs. Josicleda, Rodrigo and Suzana and their students have worked with Dr. Srini to develop “SUPER” (Hydrologic System Response Unit of Pernambuco), a version of the Hydrologic and Water Quality System (HAWQS) for the State of Pernambuco, currently being used by APAC (Pernambuco State Water and Climate Agency).  

Of course, over the last few years COVID has made face-to-face collaboration more difficult, but these SWAT leaders and their students are regaining momentum. During the COVID years Dr. Danielle has made available a SWAT+ course online. And in late May, under a co-funded program between the Pernambuco's (FACEPE) and Sao Paulo’s (FAPESP) agencies for research, they conducted a three-day SWAT+ short course, delivered in-person and via teleconference, at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) in Sao Carlos. This course was the kick-off of a long-term collaborative effort among the Brazilian Water Resources Association Technical Commission on Education ("ABRHidro-CT-Educacao”), the National Institute of Science & Technology National Observatory for Water Security and Adaptive Management (“INCT-ONSEAdapta”), funded by CNPq (Brazilian Research Council),  and the UNESCO Chair on Urban Waters of USP.

This has led to discussions with Dr. Srini about developing a version of HAWQS, tentatively called “BEST” (Brazilian Ecohydrological Simulation Tool), that would cover all of Brazil. BEST will be a collaborative platform. Tentative plans include Dr. Srini providing a 10km x 10km SWAT model (initially uncalibrated) for the entire country. Brazilian researchers would be encouraged both to help calibrate the country-wide model and to contribute their more detailed, calibrated and validated SWAT models for other watersheds, starting with models of important Brazilian watersheds developed by the group. The Brazilian SWAT community would reach out to other universities and government agencies like EMBRAPA and ANA to contribute to this national effort.  Dr. Srini’s staff would initially maintain the system, incorporating contributed SWAT models for Brazilian watersheds and providing access to the system via the SWAT website.  The hope is that the first version of BEST could be made available for testing in 2024. First presentations of BEST will be done by Dr. Danielle at the International SWAT Conference in Aarhus, Denmark and at the Brazilian Water Resources Conference later this year.

Session ID: 183454 
Session Title: H002. Advancement in Watershed Modeling: Surface/Subsurface Processes, Management and Regulatory Science Implementations 
Section: Hydrology 

Since 2016, this modeling session has been initiated to provide broad discussions among international scientists from different disciplines. Specifically, contributions from the SWAT community are fruitful with great success. We hope mutual efforts in this session can advocate advanced insights for future investigation on both modeling development and the associated management strategies along with interactions from the government authorities. See you in San Francisco~!

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