Aaron Higer (retired)
Data from this project include water levels (gage), ground elevation (DEM), water surfaces, real-time water surfaces, EDEN grid, hindcasted data, historic hourly data (2000-2005), and meteorological data (rainfall and evapotranspiration).
In addition, a number of applications have been developed to assist in using the EDEN spatial data layers. EDENapps includes:
1. DataViewer - Displays EDEN data layers including panning, zooming, and animation of multiple dates of water surface, depth, and days since dry; queries of data values, and generation of time-series graphs.
2, xyLocator - Returns values from EDEN data layers at specific x,y coordinates over a specified time period. Users can input a file with a list of sample site locations.
3. Transect Plotter - Select a point-to-point transect (not necessarily a straight line) and plot EDEN data profile over the time series, including animation, plotting of observer data, and ground slope.
4. NetCDF to Grid - NetCDFtoGrid is a program for converting EDEN water level, water depth, and days since dry files from EDEN NetCDF files to ESRI Grid files
5. Depth & Days Since Dry - a program for creating daily surfaces (in NetCDF file format, .nc) of water depth and days since dry from EDEN daily water level surfaces and ground elevation model.
The EDEN network provides a framework to integrate data collected by other agencies in a common quality-assured database. In addition to real-time network, collaboration among agencies will provide the EDEN project with valuable historic vegetation and water-depth data. This is the first time these data have been compiled and analyzed as a collective set.
Price, Susan D.
Higer, Aaron; Palaseanu, Monica; Fujisaki, Ikuko; Mazzotti, Frank
Full text of the document is available at: <http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/UW/UW27800.pdf>
Roehl, Edwin A., Jr.
Roehl, E. A., Jr.
This paper was presented at the 7th International Conference on Hydroinformatics, Nice, France, 04-08 September 2006, publication edited by P. Goubesville, J. Cunge, V. Guinot, and S. Y. Liong
Price, S. D.
Pearlstine, L.
The abstract is available online from Science Direct at the link below. A journal subscription is required for access to the full article. To view the abstract click on the link below and select volume 34, and then issue 7.
Liu, Zhongwei; Higer, Aaron; Mazzotti, Frank; Owen, Dianne; Allen, Jenny; Pearlstine, Leonard
Henkel, Heather S.
Petkewich, Matthew D.
Volin, J.; Owen, D.; Pearlstine, L.; Allen, J.; Mazzotti, F.; Higer, A.
The EDEN water-level network consists of hourly water-level data from over 250 gaging stations and includes freshwater (nontidal) marsh gaging stations, boundary gages on canals, and coastal gaging stations operated by the Big Cypress National Preserve (BCNP), Everglades National Park (ENP), South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), and USGS. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and SFWMD recently documented or surveyed a majority of the hydrologic gages in the Greater Everglades to obtain correct values for converting water-level data from NGVD 29 to NAVD 88. The NAVD 88 datum is consistent in comparing water-level data across the Greater Everglades and computing accurate water depths.
Spatially continuous interpolation of water surface across the greater Everglades is generated for daily median values of the water level gages for the EDEN network beginning January 1, 2000. Surfaces are recorded as elevation in centimeters relative to North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88).
The origin and extent of the EDEN grid were selected to cover not only existing Airborne Height Finder (AHF) data from the ground elevation model and current regions of interest for Everglades restoration, but to cover a rectangular area that includes all landscape units and conservation areas in place at the time of its development.
Rainfall data based on Next Generation Radar (NEXRAD) data from the U.S. National Weather Service provides complete spatial coverage of rainfall amounts for the State of Florida. The accuracy of NEXRAD data is enhanced when adjusted using the local rain-gage data. The NEXRAD coverage for the South Florida Water Management District area includes rainfall amounts for 15-minute intervals for the period January 1, 2002 to present for 2 km by 2 km grid resolution. The SFWMD receives 'near real-time' 15-minute data (NRD) continuously. These NRD are compiled, verified, and quality-assured at the end of each month in the end-of-month (EOM) sets of 15-minute files. The EOM files use 81 additional rain gage data that are not available real-time and a proprietary algorithm based on the Brandes method to adjust radar rainfall values.
Evapotranspiration data are available in files from 1995-2004, 2005 - 2008, and 2009.
1. Water-level data for all the EDEN gages is retrieved from an ftp server 2. Water-level data reported in NGVD 29 are converted to NAVD 88 3. Daily median water level is calculated 4. Linear interpolation is used to create boundary conditions along canals and levees 5. Radial Bias Function multiquadric interpolation of extended data (median water level from gages in marsh and interpolated values along canals) is used to generate continuous water level surfaces daily 6. The continuous water surface is predicted on the EDEN grid (400m x 400m) 7. Water depth is estimated by subtracting the EDEN ground digital elevation model (DEM) from the predicted water surface
The USGS retrieves water level data daily from over 250 gaging stations that record and transmit several water level values throughout the day, most hourly from recorders ranging from approximately 81 deg, 07 min 19 sec to 80 deg 13 min 05 sec West and from 25 deg 13 min 27 sec to 26 deg 40 min 47 sec North. An additional 28 gages do not have telemetry and are manually read and added to the network. All transmitted data are entered and stored in the National Water Information System (NWIS), a database operated by the USGS. There are a total of over 250 gages used for water surface interpolation of the freshwater Everglades.
All gages in the EDEN network are operated and maintained by four separate agencies including Everglades National Park, South Florida Water Management District, Big Cypress National Preserve, and the USGS.
Water-level gaging stations have been surveyed, until recently, to the National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 (NGVD 29); however, this datum has inconsistencies in the vertical network that have never been resolved for southern Florida. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and SFWMD recently documented or surveyed a majority of the hydrologic gages in the Greater Everglades to obtain correct values for converting water-level data from NGVD 29 to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88). These and other data provided by BCNP and ENP have been used to create datum-correction values for the EDEN network gages, allowing historic water-level data to be converted from NGVD 29 the NAVD 88.
Three methods were used to determine the correction for a gaging station: 1. Differential or basic Global Positioning System (GPS) - a highly accurate satellite-based surveying system 2. Optical survey - a traditional line-of-sight survey from points of known elevation; and 3. CORPSCON 1 version 6.0 - a program that interpolates the difference between ground elevation in NAVD 88 and NGVD 29 for a given location specified by latitude and longitude, and further refined by using the VERTCON version 2.5 grid modified by USACE Jacksonville District to incorporate the CERP vertical control network established in 2001-2002.
The current scope of work will continue operation and maintenance of 25 gaging stations and will implement the hydrologic tools to support biological and ecological assessments of the impacts of the restoration plan for the greater Everglades.
See the Annual Report for 2007 at <http://sofia.usgs.gov/eden/annual-rpt/summary-annrpt07.php> for more details
The three-step modeling approach for estimating water levels at the new EDEN gaging stations produced satisfactory results. The coefficients of determination (R2) for 21 of the 25 estimates were greater than 0.95, and all of the estimates (25 of 25) were greater than 0.82. The model estimates showed good agreement with the measured data. For some new EDEN stations with limited measured data, the record extension (hindcasts) included periods beyond the range of the data used to train the artificial neural network models. The comparison of the hindcasts with long-term water-level data proximal to the new EDEN gaging stations indicated that the water-level estimates were reasonable. The percent model error (root mean square error divided by the range of the measured data) was less than 6 percent, and for the majority of stations (20 of 25), the percent model error was less than 1 percent.
1. The EDENweb (<http://sofia.usgs.gov/eden>) serves EDEN daily water level surfaces for 1/1/2000 to current. Based on status of gage data, the surfaces are real-time, provisional, or final.
2. The EDENapps tools are posted to the EDENweb: a. Data Viewer b. xyLocator c. Transect Plotter d. Depth&DaysSinceDry e. GRIDtoNetCDF f. NetCDFtoGRID
3. Twenty-five water level gages were operated as part of the EDEN network of water level gages.
4. EDENapps tools posted to CERPZone; required some recoding, testing and documentation.
5. Conducted a statistical analysis of ground elevation data in WCA1 to better understand the highly variable ground elevation in that subarea.
6 Conducted a statistical analysis to define variability of ground throughout the EDEN domain and how it related to computation of water depth.
7. Funded USGS National Wetlands Research Center, Lafayette, LA for support for EDENapps maintenance and enhancements.
8. Developed training workshop and materials for use of EDENapps tools and EDEN datasets for PIs and staff, conducted training at GEER for about 50 users.
9. EDEN Newsletter currently has 90 subscribers and is used to notify users of updates or additions to the EDEN website.
10. Made modifications and enhancements to the EDEN database and programs that store and manipulate the EDEN data and create the EDEN daily surfaces of water level.
11. Created a demo Everglades tree island database and web-based map application with rollover stations information, including new information formatting, with new, multi-size, and linked images, animations, and graphs - used at EDEN booth at GEER.
1. Provisional gage data for Q4 replaces real-time data, data gaps filled using simple regression with nearby gage data
2. Station TSB added - in 2005 station TS2 was discontinued. Nearby station TSB was added to the EDEN network of gages
3. Provisional water surfaces posted for 2008 Q4 replacing real-time data, data gaps filled using simple regression with nearby gage data
4. Provisional water surfaces posted for 2009 Q1 replacing real-time data, data gaps filled using simple regression with nearby gage data
5. Final 2008 water surfaces posted for WY08; gage data for 2 gages in WCA1 were updated and only the surfaces in WCA1 have changed from previous surfaces
6. Provisional Water Surfaces posted for 2008 Q4 through 2009 Q4; Provisional data gage data for 2008 Q4 and 2009 Q1 revised. Gage data for 2 gages in western WCA1 added. Data gaps filled using simple regression with nearby gage data.
1. EDEN continues to evaluate new and additional gages that may help fill in gaps in the network of gages used to create the daily water-level surfaces and potentially improve the surfaces. In 2009, EDEN added 5 gages to the network:
BARW4, BARW6A in western Big Cypress National Preserve, G338_T and G251_T in western WCA1, SR1 in Everglades National Park, and TSB replaced TS2, in Everglades National Park
2. EDEN surface water interpolation model program is being updated for new and revised datasets and expanded to include an area south of BCNP to the mangrove ecotone. The expanded area is interpolated consistent with the existing program. This task has been delayed about 6 months because data quality issues required more time to address than expected. Coordination and integration of multi-agency datasets has proven to be more time intensive than expected at this point in the project
3 days per water year (2004, 2007, 2008) are used to represent dry, wet, and average conditions for model calibration. 300-400 runs per day have been completed for the selected 9 days with varying parameter values based on EDEN extended daily medians prior to canal file revisions, including 50 runs randomly selected from 255,744 parameter scenarios. The parameter scenarios and resultant SW grids will serve as reference for evaluating canal file revisions
A USACE contract is in place to collect water level data at approximately 65 benchmarks through the Everglades in wet season 2009, dry season 2010, and wet season 2010. These data will be invaluable to continue the validation process of the EDEN surfacing model
3. EDEN assisted the USACE Survey Section in installation and survey of 34 benchmarks (BMs, surveyed to Class B standards, stainless steel rod driven to refusal) in the Everglades wetland marshes. EDEN compiled the location of BMs, obtained permits where required, and will post all BM elevations and data sheets on the EDENweb
4. Rainfall and evapotranspiration data continue to be updated regularly for the EDEN gage network and posted to the EDENweb
5. Pilot data analysis was begun to review data in Shark River Slough for oligohaline zone analysis
6. EDEN provided hydroperiod maps and mean monthly water depth data for the 2009 System Status Report to assist with hydrologic assessments of component areas of the Everglades and for understanding the total system hydrology
1. Water-level data management
a. Coordinate daily Water-level (WL) data transfer b. Maintain vertical datum for all gages c. Create input data sets for EDEN Median Server for daily, quarterly, and annual surfacing d. Review surfaces for problem WL data, resolve the problems
2. If new surface water (SW) model approved, reprocess all surfaces to 2000 and post
3. Develop and implement gap filling equations for all gages a. Develop equations for all gages (as gages are added to EDEN) b. Revise equations after NAVD88 data in NWIS c. Incorporate estimated data into EDEN database (db) d. Create automated process for gap filling
4. Improve National Water Information System (NWIS) data process a. Recode, revise, test NWIS data process
5. When new datum surveys are completed, update survey data for gages and revise WL data at gages a. Using new datum surveys at gages in 2009/2010 by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and others, evaluate new survey data and impacts to EDEN, when data available b. Update EDENweb db for new survey conversion, when data available c. Update Daily median server for conversion value to run SW model, when data available d. Revise NWIS data with new conversion to NAVD88, when data available e. Evaluate impacts to EDEN surface
6. Add new gages to EDEN a. Evaluate WL data by comparing with nearby gages b. Add gage data to NWIS/EDEN db/ftp retrievals/ET and rain data/etc., as needed c. Create gap filling equations for all gages, as needed d. Incorporate gap-filling equations into EDENdb, as needed e. Hindcast new stations (if needed) and add to EDENdb, as needed f. New gages posted to EDENweb, as needed g. Evaluate impacts of new gage to EDEN surfaces
7. Develop/implement review of agency hydrologic data (water levels) a. Review QA plans from agencies b. Develop protocol for review of 10% of gage records annually c. Conduct review in July 2010 d. Approve/archive review, provide feedback for improvements in future e. Document final protocol
8. Create decision rules for creating WL surfaces when gage data indicates 'dry' conditions a. Create rules b. Implement rules for WL data at gages c. Create test surfaces and evaluate impacts d. Modify rules, if needed, and retest e. Develop final rules and document protocol
9. Complete revision of SW model (model revision initiated in 2009) a. Validate model using WL data at bench marks (BMs) b. Compare pilot subregion results with results from revised SW model c. Test revised SW model for ‘dry’ condition protocols d. Document revised SW model e. Submit documentation of revised SW model to peer-reviewed journal f. Migrate new SW model to EDEN server and test
10. Install benchmarks and evaluate water levels at BMs a. Assist with BM installation (phase 2 in Everglades National Park (ENP) b. Coordinate WL data collection at all BMs i. Wet season 2009 (Nov 2009) ii. Dry season 2010 (Apr 10) iii. Wet season 2010 (Sep 10) c. Create BM db and post BM documentation to EDENweb d. Use data to test/validate revisions of SW model results
11. Hindcast WL data for gages a. Update hindcast equations for original 25 gages b. Hindcast additional gages (new) c. Extend EDEN surfaces back to 1990’s
12. Develop protocol for oligahaline zone EDEN a. As a pilot, compare data from NWIS, EDEN, and Tides and Inflows in the Mangrove Ecotone (TIME) in Shark River Slough (SRS) b. Add salinity data for USGS coastal gages on station info pages c. Develop conceptual workplan for coastal EDEN d. Compile TIME model input data for 2006 - 2009
13. Evapotranspiration (ET) and rainfall data updates a. Update ET data annually b. Update rainfall data monthly
14. Revise EDENapps a. Test revisions b. Update users' manuals and update EDENweb
15. Conduct hydrologic assessment for REstoration COordination & VERification (RECOVER) a. Develop ideas for assessing hydrology based on EDEN datasets b. Create water depth maps and other graphics
1. Data management and daily water surface creation
a. Create and post daily water surfaces on schedule b. Implement automated data assurance and estimation program c. Use new datum surveys at gages to revise water level data d. Add new gages if appropriate e. Implement rules for handling ‘dry’ data at gages and in EDEN surfaces f. Complete revision of surface-water model g. Use water level data at benchmarks to evaluate/improve EDEN surfaces h. Post benchmark data to the EDENweb
2.Fully test, document and use the newly revised surface model for EDEN surfacing a. Develop confidence layers for surfaces b. Pilot additional surfaces, such as slope, rainfall, ET
3. Continue to enhance the EDENweb to provide users with data and information that is user-friendly and easily accessible
4. Complete effort to hindcast water-level data and create of water surfaces prior to 2000
5. Implement webpage for EDEN oligohaline zone (coastal EDEN)
6. Update rainfall and evapotranspiration data on schedule
7. Participate in NCER2011
8.Consider collaboration with National Wetlands Research Center for revisions to EDENapps
9. Conduct hydrologic assessments for RECOVER
10. Continue to document EDEN protocols, research, and data analyses
The Water Surfaces data in NetCDF have the following attributes: Creation Date, Conventions (version), Source (what software was used to write the file), Layer name, spatial reference (UTM Zone), Datum, Spheroid, Prime Meridian, Angular Units, Projection, Linear Units, False Easting, False Northing, Central Meridian, Scale Factor, Latitude of Origin, Grid Mapping Units, Starting Date (for the data), and Time Step Units. The data are also available as Geotiff files. The Daily Median Output Files contain 3 months of daily datasets. There are two files for each day: a "median" and a "median_reject". The "median" file is the one that was used to create the surface for a given day, the "median_reject" file contains a list of the gages not used for that day.
The Water Level (Gage) data for each area have a graphic showing the location of the gages and whether they are real time or non-real time and a list of the stations in each area. The information for each station includes station information, data links, data information, ground elevation/vegetation, and other information available for the station.
Information for rainfall collection is arranged by date and collection site within the following areas: Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglades National Park East and West, Florida Bay, Gulf of Mexico, Pennsuco Wetlands, and Water Conservation Areas 1, 2, and 3. Data are available starting in 2002 and are available by month within approximately 45 days after the end of each month.
Evapotranspiration data are available for Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglades National Park East and West, Florida Bay, Gulf of Mexico, Pennsuco Wetlands, and Water Conservation Areas 1, 2, and 3 from 1994 - 2009.
Hindcasted measured data include the date and time of collection and the water level in feet related to NAVD 88 measured at the gaging station. The extended record combines the measured data (provisional) with the filled hindcasts. Periods of missing data are completed with filled hindcast or interpolated data in feet NAVD 88.
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
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