Watershed-scale runoff routing and solute transport in a spatially aggregated hydrological framework

Abstract

This document presents the implementation of several methods for geo-spatial analysis of river networks and watersheds for runoff routing and solute transport in R in order to contribute in a comprehensive hydrological modelling to the current framework of the R package ”hydromad”. The main aim of the study is to develop R routines to coupled the outputs of the hydrological framework of the R package ”hydromad” to the selected solute transport model looking forward better simulation of water-quality determinants transport at watershed scale. Following the research scheme presented in this proposal it is possible to prove the hypothesis behind the study. The simulation of solute transport at specific places of the river network was improved by implementing a runoff routing method at watershed-scale, the ”hydromad” package, and by coupling it into a suitable modeling framework for representing solute transport processes. The developed package, ”watersheds”, allows geo-spatial river network analysis and makes use of the Catchments and Rivers Network System (ECRINS) version 1.1, which constitutes the hydrographical system currently in use at the European Environment Agency as well as widely serving as the reference system for theWater Information System for Europe (WISE). The versatility of the code generated lets to implement geo-spatial analysis in any watershed included into the ECRINS, as a consequence, watersheds along entire Europe could be analyzed. This constitutes an important fact because several institutions or scientific community related with the WISE system could take advantage of the package and this document.