Hydrologic Simulation Program – Fortran (HSPF) tools and application development

Minnesota faces many water quality and quantity challenges. State, federal and local organizations are faced with understanding hydrologic and water-quality problems and targeting cost effective solutions that are based in science. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has standardized its modeling approach for the development of the Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategies (WRAPS) and Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) reports required by state and federal law. The MPCA uses the Hydrologic Simulation Program – Fortran (HSPF) model to provide a highly effective means to spatially and temporally understand hydrologic and water quality processes over various land surfaces and water bodies.
A HSPF model repository was created in the previous work order to maintain a statewide database of watershed models. This database keeps track of the most recent model files. One of the challenges is the efficient and consistent evaluation of updated models. This work order develops scripts to expedite the comparison of HSPF watershed models to observed flow and water quality data. The scripts will provide flexibility to the user.