ACCESS Open House Demonstration Abstracts

Digital Watershed Hydrology Laboratory

David Curtis, Sr. Res. Scientist, Education Div., NCSA, 217.244.5594
dcurtis@ncsa.uiuc.edu

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/RiverWeb/Projects/DWHL/

The educational problem is how to use modeling and visualization to "bring alive" to students the linkages between land use and watershed response to rainfall. Here we have assembled a pilot, multimedia learning resource that demonstrates fundamentals of hydrology as applied to watershed management, and supports structured though flexible inquiries into hydrologic processes.

The underlying simulations employ the CASC-2D hydrologic model running in conjunction with GRASS GIS. A web-based interface provides access to a variety of simulation products that demonstrate how and where water flows in response to different hypothetical land covers and storm events.

Input maps (landcover, soils, elevation); output maps: runoff and infiltration, both as static images and movies; hydrographs; tabular data; students' electronic notebook in which observations can be linked to specific simulation products.

The simulation generating the visual products was developed by environmental hydrologists working at NCSA. These products are incorporated into an experimental, web-based learning resource. Targeted for use in courses at college undergraduate courses, including geography and urban planning, this resource supports a variety of guided inquiries into the dynamics of flow within a watershed and demonstrates how computational science and visualization can be applied to the study of concrete environmental policy and planning issues. The electronic notebook serves as both an instructional planning tool and a student lab book to record and discuss findings. Subject to funding, Alliance EOT partners in Illinois and Ohio plan to evaluate the current web-based "simulator" linked to geographically diverse datasets and distributed computational resources.

Hardware and software requirements: None other than latest version of IE or NS browser, a reasonably fast Wintel machine with T1 or better connectivity.

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