California Water and Environmental Models and Data
Model category descriptions from "Central Valley Project Improvement Act Programmatic
Environmental Impact Statement, Phase II, Analytical Tools Report", April
1, 1994, USBR.
Reservoir Operations/Stream Flow: For this
inventory, surface water analytical tools are defined as tools that can
simulate reservoir operations, stream flows, surface water diversion, and canal
flows.
Water
Balance: Water balance analytical tools are tools that
simulate mass balance of the hydrologic system. These tools are reviewed under
Groundwater.
Groundwater: Groundwater
analytical tools are defined as tools that can simulate groundwater conditions,
such as groundwater levels, subsidence, recharge, and groundwater quality.
Hydrodynamic/Transport: Hydrodynamic
and Transport tools are defined as tools that can simulate the flow and quality
of water in a river, delta, or bay environment and may include such factors as
tidal influences. The focus is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Water
Temperature: Water temperature tools are defined as tools that can
simulate the temperature of water in a reservoir, river, or estuarine
environment.
Water
Quality: Water quality tools are defined as tools that can
simulate the quality of surface or drainage waters.
Power: Power
tools are defined as tools that can either simulate power generation from
hydropower facilities or the power demand for pumping facilities and other
demands.
Economics: Regional economics tools are defined as tools that can assess impacts on
total economic activity, personal income, and employment from changes in
agricultural production, water availability changes or other changes. Agricultural production economics tools
provide assessment of changes in crop and income production due to policy
changes or water price changes. Specific impacts assessed may include cropping
pattern changes, land fallowing, or water purchases. Municipal and Industrial (M&I) economic tools are used
to assess the value of changes in water supply to urban areas that may result
from implementation of the CVPIA. This includes changes to existing CVP M&I
contractors and to potential purchasers of transferred water. Recreation economics tools are
defined as tools that assess impacts on the various types of recreation,
including stream and river recreation, reservoir recreation, delta recreation,
and ocean recreation. Fisheries economics tools are defined as tools
that assess impacts on various types of sport and commercial fishing
activities.
Vegetation
and Wildlife: Habitat wildlife and vegetation tools provide
evaluation of quality changes that may be influenced by changes in water
availability or quality.
Fisheries: Fisheries
population tools simulate the survival of certain species based on water flow,
temperature, or other factors.
Report,
California DFG, November 2005 (.pdf, 0.8 MB)
Model,
California DFG, November 2005 (.xls,
7.1 MB)
For more
information regarding this model, please contact Dean Marston at DMarston@dfg.ca.gov
The first
group includes the Fischer Delta Model (FDM) and the DWR-DSM model.
Both of these models are based on similar numerical schemes; they are
externally coupled models of flow and salt transport.
Fischer
Delta Model. The Fischer Delta Model (FDM) is a deterministic hydrodynamic and
salt transport model developed for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This model
simulates flow and salinity variations due to changes in channel geometry,
hydrologic variability, and operation of control structures in an estuarial
environment.
The FDM
simulates hydrodynamics by solving the one-dimensional flow equation by the
method of characteristics. The convective dispersive transport equations are
solved by a Lagrangian method. Flow and water quality are simulated in a
sequential manner; tidally averaged velocities computed by the flow module are
stored for each time step and are used as input to the salinity model. The flow
domain is discretized into a number of smaller channel segments (called links),
which are joined by common points (called junctions).
There are
several versions of the FDM, with each version developed to meet special needs
of different projects. The model area covered is also different in each
version. Version 7.0 includes Sacramento River downstream of the City of
Sacramento, San Joaquin river downstream of Vernalis, and Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta east of Benicia Bridge to Eckley (in the Carquinez Strait).
Versions 8.0 and higher do not require input of the downstream boundary
salinity, instead it is calculated. This effectively extends the boundary to
the Golden Gate. Version 9.0, used by Contra Costa Water District (CCWD), has
incorporated improved numerical methods to eliminate numerical dispersion. A
consulting firm, Flow Science, is currently working on Version 10.0, which will
revise the channel geometries of the original model to incorporate information
from new field surveys. DWR-DSM. The
Department of Water Resources Delta Simulation Model (DWR-DSM) is a
deterministic hydrodynamic and salt transport model developed by the California
Department of Water Resources (DWR) for Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This
model is an improved version of the FDM with the following revisions: (1) a
spatially finer description of the Delta geometry; (2) additional simulation
capabilities of hydraulic structure operation; (3) detailed accounting for
agricultural diversions and return flows; (4) correction for leak-plug
algorithm of FDM; and (5) procedures for modeling gate operation, hourly
variable pumping, and earth tides. The model area in the Delta includes
Sacramento river downstream of the City of Sacramento, San Joaquin river
downstream of Vernalis, and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta east of the Benicia
Bridge.
The
DWR-DSM consists of (1) a flow module DWRFLO, which computes stage, velocity,
and flow circulation, and (2) a transport module DWRSAL. These two modules are
not coupled, but are sequentially linked, as in the FDM. The Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta is currently represented in DWR-DSM as a network of 500
interconnected channels, 420 junctions, 13 open water areas, and approximately
20 tide gates.
DSM2 is a
publicly available one-dimensional hydrodynamic, water quality, and
particle-tracking model. DSM2 can calculate stages, flows, velocities; many
mass transport processes, including salts, multiple non-conservative
constituents, temperature, THM formation potential and individual particles.
The model has primarily been used in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta but has
currently been extended to the upper San Joaquin River and the California
Aqueduct and Delta Mendota Canal.
More
information about DSM2 including documentation, program executable, user group
and calibration can be found at
http://baydeltaoffice.water.ca.gov/modeling/deltamodeling/models/dsm2/dsm2.cfm
The RMA-based
models include the Link-Node Model and the RMA Multidimensional Models. These
models are coupled flow and salt transport models.
Link-Node
Model.
The Link-Node model is a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model developed by
Resource Management Associates (RMA) for the San Francisco Bay-Delta system.
This model also has several versions. The Delta version of the model includes
Sacramento River downstream of the City of Sacramento, San Joaquin River
downstream of Vernalis, and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta east of the Benicia
Bridge. Other versions of the model extend the boundary to include San
Francisco Bay and areas within Golden Gate Bridge.
Two water
quality modules are linked to RMA Link Node model: (1) AQUAL, which considers
tidally averaged transport velocities to determine long-term trends in water
quality; and (2) DQUAL, which considers diurnal variations in tidal
hydrodynamics to simulate diurnal fluctuations in water quality. The flow
domain is discretized into channel links connected by nodes; one node may be
connected to several nodes, resulting in pseudo-two-dimensional description of
open water areas. The one-dimensional equation of motion is written for the
links and the continuity equation is applied at the nodes. Recent software
additions include animation capability and an improved solution scheme. The new
Eulerian-Lagrangian algorithm allows the coupling of flow and salt transport
solution within each time step.
RMA Multidimensional
Models.
RMA developed a two-multidimensional model for estuarine hydrodynamics and salt
transport. Dr. Ian King of University of California, Davis, maintains the
models. The Resource Management Associates (2)-Dimensional Vertically averaged
hydrodynamic model (RMA-2V) was originally developed for the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers (COE). This model forms the main hydrodynamic components of the
"TABS-2" system used by the COE and U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA). Nonlinear two-dimensional vertically averaged shallow flow
equations are solved by the finite element method. Phenomenological terms
include wind stress, Coriollis effect, and bottom stress. The model assumes
constant density, so that baroclinic effects are not considered. Recent
modifications of the RMA-2V model include the option to transition from
one-dimensional to two-dimensional elements, and an improved algorithm for
handling wetting and drying shallow areas along the margins of the estuary.
RMA-2V is linked with
two-dimensional water quality model Resource Management Associates Version 4
Model (RMA-4). RMA-4 is an advection-diffusion model that simulates simple
conservative constituents, and constituents that follow first order growth and
decay kinetics.
Resource Management
Associates Version 10 Model (RMA-10) is a multidimensional finite element model for
simulating estuary hydrodynamics that allows for three-dimensional formulation
of the flow domain. The model solves three dimensional shallow water equations,
including baroclinic effects. The system of equations includes the horizontal
momentum equations in two directions, the vertically integrated continuity
equation, the salinity transport equation, and an equation of state. The model
is used by COE as the national Standard Estuary model.
Semi-Implicit-3D Model (SI-3D) is a three-dimensional numerical model developed by
Dr. Peter E. Smith at U.S. Geological Survey in the 1990s to simulate the
density-driven gravitational circulation in the deepwater channels of the San
Francisco Bay and, more recently, the Sacramento River in the vicinity of the
Delta Cross Channel. The model uses a three-time-level, leapfrog-trapezoidal
numerical scheme that is second-order accurate in the spatial and temporal
numerical approximations. The three-time-level scheme is preferred over a
two-time-level scheme for problems with strong nonlinearities. The stability of
the semi-implicit scheme is free from any time-step limitation related to the
terms describing vertical diffusion and the propagation of the surface gravity
waves. A key feature of the scheme is that it does not rely on any form of
vertical/horizontal mode splitting to treat the vertical diffusion implicitly.
The model is programmed in Fortran 95 and is designed for parallel processing
on shared memory computers. A Java-based, 3-D particle-tracking model and
interactive visualization toolkit are available for use with the model.
TRIM and
UnTRIM models are a series of numerical models developed by Prof. Vincenzo Casulli
of Trento University. A characteristic analysis of the shallow water equations
points out that the numerical instability is controlled by the gravity wave
terms in the momentum equations and by the transport terms in the continuity
equation. A semi-implicit finite-difference scheme has been formulated so that
these terms and the vertical diffusion terms are treated implicitly and the
remaining terms explicitly to control the numerical stability and the
computations are carried out over a uniform finite-difference computational
mesh without invoking horizontal or vertical coordinate transformations. TRIM
stands for Tidal, Residual, Intertidal Mudflat Model, which was named in the
paper by Cheng, Casulli, and Gartner, 1993. Further implementations and
applications of TRIM models in studies of the San Francisco Bay and the Delta
took place at the U. S. Geological Survey and at Stanford University. An
unstructured grid version of TRIM model family is introduced, or UnTRIM
(pronounces as “you trim”), which preserves these basic numerical properties
and modeling philosophy, only the computations are carried out over an
unstructured orthogonal grid. The unstructured grid offers the flexibilities in
representing complex study areas so that fine grid resolution can be placed in
regions of interest, and coarse grids are used to cover the remaining domain.
Thus, the computational efforts are concentrated in areas of importance, and an
overall computational saving can be achieved because the total number of
grid-points is dramatically reduced. To use this modeling approach, an
unstructured grid mesh must be generated to properly reflect the properties of
the domain of the investigation. The new modeling flexibility in grid structure
is accompanied by new challenges associated with issues of grid generation. To
take full advantage of this new model flexibility, the model grid generation
should be guided by insights into the physics of the problems; and the insights
needed may require a higher degree of modeling skill. Please refer to the web
page http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/~rtcheng/UnTRIM.pdf for detailed information.
Cheng, R. T., V. Casulli, and J. W. Gartner, 1993,
Tidal, residual, intertidal mudflat (TRIM) model and its applications to San
Francisco Bay, California, Estuarine, Coastal, and Shelf Science, Vol. 36, p.
235-280.