Abstract:
Water is a vital natural resource. For planning, designing, execution and management of water
resources efficiently, the hydrological modelling is an essential aspect of any development
project. This training course is designed to impart and transfer the working knowledge of using
a semi-distributed hydrological model called SWAT.
SWAT, a river basin or watershed scale model, is a physically-based, spatially distributed,
continuous model that operates on a daily time step. It is a product of four decades of modelling
efforts by USDA-ARS, USDA-NRCS and Texas A&M University. It was developed to predict
the impact of land management practices on water, sediment and agricultural chemical yields
in large complex watersheds with varying soils, land use and management conditions over long
periods. It can incorporate the effects of tanks and the reservoirs/check dams off-stream as well
as on-stream. The major advantage of SWAT is that it does not require much calibration. It,
therefore, can be used on ungauged watersheds, can predict relative impacts of alternative
scenarios such as changes in management practices, climate and vegetation on water quality
and quantity. Model output includes all water balance components at the level of each
watershed and is available at daily, monthly or annual time steps. SWAT model has been
extensively used to address water resources and nonpoint-source pollution problems for a range
of scales and environmental conditions across the globe.
SWAT typically uses the ArcSWAT interface to create its inputs that work in the licensed
ArcGIS environment. The Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a free and open-source GIS that performs
most GIS functions as in commercial GIS. Given its robustness and wide use in academic and
professional environments, the present training course conducted using QSWAT, a QGIS
interface for SWAT model.
