The main objective of this thesis is to create a methodology for calculation the simple water balance proposed by Ron Mireau automatically and within a GIS framework. In the initial part of this project a data model was developed to describe the spatial features of the hydrologic system within the SFWMD. In conjunction with the SFWMD, PBS and J, and CRWR, an Arc Hydro Enterprise Database (AHED) was developed and implemented in a geodatabase design. The AHED is an extension of the Arc Hydro data model. This thesis looked at ways to describe the movement of water through the SFWMD using the defined geodatabase features in the AHED. To describe the movement of water in the SFWMD two new terms were defined: water control unit and water control catchment. A water control unit can be considered the operationally significant portion of the water control unit network, the water bodies control by the SFWMD. A water control catchment is defined as the extent of land surface area that drains into a water control unit The Hydrologic Flux Coupler is an excellent approach to automating the geospatial water balance method. Once the links between the documented fluxes and flows are established in the Hydrologic Flux Coupler the only additional requirement is to add time series information into the Timeseries table, in the correct format. The data collection time and computation time of the Hydrologic Flux Coupler is reduces compared to the amount of time required to create an Excel spreadsheet. In particular, the Hydrologic Flux Coupler decreases the amount of time for creating visualizations of the time series information. In addition to the development of the geospatial water balance, an additional analysis of the sensitivity of the geospatial water balance was preformed on the C41-A-North water control unit and catchment for an entire year, November 1, 2002 to October 31, 2003. The results of the data evaluation over the C41-A-North produces conclusions in four areas of interest: rainfall; evaporation and evapotranspiration; calculation of Q trans; and estimation of water surface area.

Reprinted from The Center for Research in Water Resources