Water Quality and Flow Management Scenarios in the Qu’Appelle River–Reservoir System Using Loosely Coupled WASP and CE-QUAL-W2 Models
Date
2023
Authors
Terry, Julie
Lindenschmidt, Karl-Erich
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MDPI
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Article
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Abstract
The water bodies of the Saskatchewan Prairies suffer multiple stressors, and demand for water is expected to increase. Water quality models can help evaluate water management strategies and risks such as climate change. This study assesses the impact of interbasin water transfers on the water quality of a strategic, eutrophic prairie reservoir that receives poor-quality watershed run-off. A one-dimensional WASP model was used to estimate nutrient transformations in the transfers along a 97 km river channel. The WASP model was then loosely coupled to a two-dimensional CE-QUAL-W2 model of the downstream receiving reservoir. Output from the WASP model was manually transformed into boundary conditions for the CE-QUAL-W2 reservoir model. This method improves on an earlier attempt to estimate nutrient transformations in the transfers using linear regression. Results from the loosely coupled models suggest Buffalo Pound Lake would respond well to the interbasin transfers. The number of threshold exceedances decreased for all modeled water quality variables. Nutrient concentrations were most influenced in the open water season following spring freshet. Any additional reduction of threshold exceedances during winter was minimal in comparison. These results are interesting from a management perspective as increased transfers under winter operations risk ice damage to the river channel.
Description
© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
Keywords
CE-QUAL-W2, WASP, water quality model, reservoir
Citation
Terry, J.; Lindenschmidt, K.-E. Water Quality and Flow Management Scenarios in the Qu’Appelle River–Reservoir System Using Loosely Coupled WASP and CE-QUAL-W2 Models. Water 2023, 15, 2005. https://doi.org/10.3390/ w15112005
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Citation
Terry, J.; Lindenschmidt, K.-E. Water Quality and Flow Management Scenarios in the Qu’Appelle River–Reservoir System Using Loosely Coupled WASP and CE-QUAL-W2 Models. Water 2023, 15, 2005. https://doi.org/10.3390/ w15112005
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DOI
10.3390/ w15112005