Commonwealth of Virginia Flow-Ecology

Flow Ecology Concepts

• Flow-Ecology Curve Basics
• Modeling, Errors, and Risk-Management

HWI Project Description

Virginia’s estimated 51,021 miles of streams and rivers contribute nearly 10 billion gallons of freshwater per day to the Chesapeake Bay, (VDEQ, 2009), and support globally significant resources including the Clinch River in southwest Virginia, a biodiversity hotspot with more species of endangered and rare freshwater mussels than anywhere else in the world; and the Roanoke drainage, known for the most distinctive freshwater fish communities on the Atlantic Slope of the United States (VDCR, 2009). In addition to supporting these well-known natural treasures, Virginia’s waters also support public health, environment, and economic growth for the Commonwealth’s nearly 7.9 million residents (US Census, 2009). As demand for water and the frequency of drought events increases, defining the unique set of beneficial water uses within each watershed and assigning the requisite in-stream flows necessary to sustain them is becoming an essential part of determining water availability – and maintaining healthy waters.

The Commonwealth of Virginia is currently developing a “systems-based approach to integrated watershed assessment, protection and conservation” (U.S. EPA, 2009) as outlined by the U.S. EPA’s Healthy Watersheds Initiative. To assist in achieving this goal, the Office of Surface and Ground Water Supply Planning (OSGWSP) at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has designed a Water Supply Decision Support System (WSDSS), to provide a holistic approach to data acquisition, analysis and modeling. The WSDSS is currently used for water supply permitting and planning, specifically, to evaluate the cumulative flow altering effects of the full range of water supply activities: withdrawals, discharges, and reservoir operation.

With technical assistance from the U.S. Geological Survey, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, and academic experts from Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic including Virginia Commonwealth University, we propose to use extensive existing biological and hydrologic data - including the Virginia’s Interactive Stream Assessment Resource (INSTAR) and U.S. EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program Phase 5 Watershed Model - to identify relationships between flow alteration, water quality and loss of ecological integrity for different stream types in Virginia. These quantified relationships can then be used to support public decision-making regarding the in-stream flow necessary to sustain wildlife and wildlife habitat in Virginia’s waters. Expanding the WSDSS to evaluate the interaction between ecology, water quality, flow-alteration, and land use will enable DEQ to engage stakeholders in continuous, scientifically defensible, socially acceptable, and practical adaptive management of aquatic resources to identify, maintain and restore Healthy Watersheds throughout the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth of Virginia performs water supply planning, permitting, and flow ecology analyses in an online, multi-user system called WOOOMM (WOOOMM is an Online Object-Oriented Meta-Model). The WOOOMM system connects to water withdrawal & point source databases, remotely sensed land use information, and its own internal channel routing and reservoir management components to create both altered and un-altered hydrographs. The base model for water inputs is VAHydro, an HSPF rainfall/runoff model running over the climatic drivers encountered from 1984-2005 . VAHydro is based on a custom implementation of the Chesapeake Bay Programs Phase 5.3 Watershed Model.

More info on WOOOMM

WOOOMM is an object oriented “meta-modeling” system that facilitates the linking of online data sources and environmental models to form a decision support framework for predictive and explanatory analysis. The system has native integration with data sources from the USGS, NOAA, EPA and the Commonwealth of Virginia’s own monitoring programs. It also has the ability to couple loosely with such models as HSPF, GWLF, CEQUAL-W2, and the habitat suitability models that are the result of IFIM processes.

Contents

• Project Background
• Project Goals
• Project Objectives/Scope of Work
  • Phase 1: Developing Hydrologic Foundation and Decision Support Framework
  • Phase 2: Develop Integrated Scientific and Social Assessment Frameworks
  • Phase 3: Perform Integrated Watershed Plan Evaluation, Develop Regulatory Flow Standards, Fill Data gaps
  • Phase 4: Providing Model Access to Stakeholders and Expand Modeling to Include Water Quality Modeling
• Project Documentary
  • Commonwealth of Virginia Hydrologic Alteration Assessment
    • Constructing an Unaltered Hydrology Model
      • Hydrologic Framework
      • Representing the Elements in a Water Supply Mass-Balance
      • Universe of Flows Approach to Baseline Hydrology
        • Use of the CBP Phase 5 Hydrology Model
        • USGS Synthetic Hydrograph Model
        • Monitored Mass Balance Flow Model
    • WOOOMM Model Component Framework
  • Commonwealth of Virginia Flow-Ecology Assessment
    • Database Structure for Storage and Use of Ecologic Data
    • Objectives for Flow-Ecology Analysis Tasks
  • Iterative Analysis of Hydrologic and Biological Data
  • Project Schedule/Status
• Water Supply Plan Evaluation
• Literature Review

VWP Modeling

• Lake Chesdin
• VWP Water Withdrawal Concept & Modeling Training http://sifn.bse.vt.edu/sifnwiki/index.php/Vwp_model_training
• VWP Modeling Tasks http://sifn.bse.vt.edu/sifnwiki/index.php/Tasks_vwp