The Kineros2-Rhem-Agwa Suite of Modeling Tools

KINEROS2 (K2) is a spatially distributed rainfall-runoff erosion model dating back to the 1960’s. Development and improvement of K2 has continued for a variety of projects and purposes resulting in an informal suite of K2-based modeling tools. Like any detailed, distributed watershed modeling tool, the K2 suite of tools can require considerable time to delineate watersheds, discretize them into modeling elements and then parameterize these elements. These requirements motivated the development of the Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment (AGWA) tool (see: www.tucson.ars.ag.gov/agwa or https://www.epa.gov/water-research/automated-geospatial-watershed-assessment-agwa-tool-hydrologic-modeling-and-watershed). AGWA is a GIS interface jointly, developed by the USDA-Agricultural Research Service, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the University of Arizona, and the University of Wyoming to automate the parameterization, execution, and visualization of simulation results of a suite of hydrologic and erosion models (KINEROS2, and SWAT) using nationally available data or user provided input. A number of model improvements have been added since the 2019 SEDHYD meeting. They include the incorporation of the RHEM hillslope hydrology and erosion model, the ability for continuous model simulation and a snow component. All these components can be driven by stochastically generated climate variables from CLIGEN. The Climate Assessment Tool (CAT) available in AGWA alters CLIGEN parameters to produce realistic future climate scenarios including intensification. The objectives of this paper are to: 1) Provide background on K2, RHEM, AGWA, and CAT; 2) Provide an overview of the main features of these tools; 3) Describe new features and tools; and, 4) Discuss plans for future model improvements.