567 - Coupling Sensor Networks with Integrated Models of Hydrologic Processes at the Watershed Scale to Estimate Water Flux, Sediment Transport Rates, and Water Quality Transformation

The proliferation of water quality sensing stations, or Super Gages, across watersheds provides promising data streams for coupling with integrated models of hydrologic processes at the watershed scale. However, the coupling of these sensors with integrated modelling tools remains early in its development, and methodologies are needed for matching modelling structures with sensor data streams. We advance coupling these modelling tools with sensors by formulating tracer matrices, where water quality sensor variables are treated as nonconservative tracers with their own transformation functions; and the tracers are multiplicative with mass conservation for water and sediment. The tracer matrices are decomposed to model watershed processes of various timescales. We explore matrix optimization across permutations of tracers and decomposition modes, and we show model results for water and sediment flux as a function of underlying processes, as well as transformation rates for water quality parameters. The approach is applied to the South Elkhorn and Royal Spring watersheds in the inner bluegrass region of Kentucky, United States. Results presented will include: (i) methodology with nonconservative tracers to estimate water and sediment transport; (ii) quality assurance quality control procedures for the sensor datasets; (iii) visualization and interpretation of sensor data streams across timescales; (iv) analyses of water and sediment transport results across timescales; and (v) presentation of modelling comparisons with hydrographs, sedigraphs and chemographs across the watersheds.