Cyberinfrastructure supporting watershed health monitoring and management

Abstract

A distributed cyberinfrastructure (CI) is being built to collect, manage and analyse watershed health data in the Appalachian region (USA), with an early emphasis on the Fourpole Creek watershed near Marshall University, the subject of a TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) study by the US EPA in 2002. The CI architecture comprises an interactive web-based portal (Aquavit) supported by collaboration tools, modelling tools, high-performance computing (HPC), a federated data management system providing batch import/export capabilities for field-collected lab-analysed sample data or UAV-collected post-processed data, and continuous ingestion of real-time data from a network of sensors. Spatial and temporal data collected and analysed locally includes rain intensity, temperature, solar radiation, soil moisture, wind velocity, sediment properties, and several water quality parameters. Additional watershed health indicators are collected or derived from external sources, such as hydrography and hydrology data, land use data, soil types, land cover types, point and non-point contaminant sources, weather data, climate model data, multi-spectral satellite imagery.