Software Support Team: Hydrology

The TIPS Hydrology Success Team provides leadership and direction to the SMCRA Hydrology Program by delivering software, training, and technical guidance to our customers on hydrology-related issues. Our customers include OSMRE, State, and Tribe hydrologists, and federal state SMCRA programs.

Focus Areas

The Team provides support in three (3) hydrologic-related areas. These areas are listed below with examples of mining-related evaluations enabled by our TIPS software:

Groundwater

Modeling groundwater flow and mine pool seepage
Fate and transport of chemical constituents
Characterizing aquifers through evaluation of slug and pumping tests

Surface Water

Watershed modeling; peak flow analysis
Design sediment basins and drainage control structures
Surface and groundwater interaction

Water Quality

Modeling AMD treatment scenarios and costs
Characterizing mine water; reaction paths
Water quality plots including Piper and Stiff Diagrams

Current and Future Direction

Large Watershed Analysis; CHIA and PHC support
GIS Integration; Utilizing spatial analysis/evaluations
Identifying software to model watershed flooding

Team Members

The TIPS Hydrology Workgroup includes members from the States and OSMRE who work together to provide services to TIPS customers.

NAME	STATE, TRIBE, OSMRE OFFICE	PHONE	EMAIL
Brown, Kristin	OSMRE-WR	(303) 236 - 3410	kbrown2@osmre.gov
Hicks, Brian	OSMRE-MCR	(618) 463 - 6463 x 5121	bhicks@osmre.gov
Kunze, Matthew	WY/DEQ/LQD	(307) 777 - 7055	matthew.kunze@wyo.gov
Walter, Tim	TX/RRC	(512) 305 - 8808	tim.walter@rrc.state.tx.us

Software

Customer Interests and Needs: If you have hydrology-related needs that you do not see addressed, please contact any member of the TIPS Hydrology Support Team.

AMDTreat+PHREEQC - Acid mine drainage pollution abatement sizing and cost estimating software.

AQTESOLV - A suite of tools estimate aquifer parameters to analyze movement and quantity of ground water, and to evaluate pump/slug well test results.

AqQA – Software for plotting water quality graphs, evaluating water types, and performing simple water quality calculations.

The Geochemist's Workbench - A collection of sophisticated modules for simulating and solving aqueous geochemistry problems.

Groundwater Modeling System - Groundwater model system that converts map data into MODFLOW, MODPATH, and MT3D grid data to solve ground water flow problems.

Groundwater Vistas - Groundwater Vistas .is a graphical interface for building, running and analyzing numeric flow models in MODFLOW, MODPATH, and MT3D

HEC-RAS - HEC-RAS is used to evaluate impacts of floodplain encroachment (flood analysis); for example delineating the approximate limits of the 100-year floodplain. Effects of structures such as bridges, culverts, and weirs, in the flood plain can be assessed. RUSLE - Soil loss prediction software which includes a suite of modules for determining soil loss factors.

RUSLE - Soil loss predition software which includes a suite of modules for determining soil loss factors.

SEDCAD - A suite of curve number-based watershed rainfall-runoff models, RUSLE-based sediment yield analysis, and channel and hydraulic structure design utilities.

Freeware

OSMRE accepts no responsibility for the content on external websites linked from this page. Links are provided "as is" for convenience only. When you click any of the links on this page you will leave the TIPS web site.

BETCO: Barometric and Earth Tide COrrection (Sandia National Lab) - BETCO is a Windows-executable program that removes noise from water levels caused by barometric pressure and Earth tide effects.

FSWEPP (USDA Forest Service)

GSFLOW (USGS) - Coupled Ground water and Surface-water FLOW model based on the USGS Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) and Modular Ground Water Flow Model (MODFLOW-2005).

HYSEP (USGS) - HYSEP performs hydrograph separation, estimating the ground-water, or base flow, component of streamflow. The program provides an automated and consistent method for estimating base flow. Any of the three hydrograph-separation techniques of Pettyjohn and Henning (1979) can be used: fixed interval, sliding interval, or local minimum.

MODFLOW and Related programs: MODFLOW is the USGS's three-dimensional (3D) finite-difference groundwater model. MODFLOW is considered an international standard for simulating and predicting groundwater conditions and groundwater/surface-water interactions.

National Streamflow Statistics (USGS) - To provide simple methods of estimating streamflow statistics, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has developed and published regression equations estimating the magnitude and frequency of floods for every State, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and a number of metropolitan areas in the United States, and regression equations for estimating other streamflow statistics are available for many states. These equations have been compiled into the National Streamflow Statistics (NSS) Program.

PHREEQC – USGS software for Speciation, Batch-Reaction, One-Dimensional Transport, and Inverse Geochemical Calculations.

RORA (USGS) - The computer program RORA estimates ground-water recharge using the recession-curve-displacement method. The method is based on the change in total potential ground-water discharge that is caused by each recharge event.

StreamStats (USGS) - StreamStats is a Web-based tool that allows users to obtain streamflow statistics, drainage-basin characteristics, and other information for user-selected sites on streams.

Visual MINTEQ (USGS) - a freeware chemical equilibrium model for the calculation of metal speciation, solubility equilibria, sorption etc. for natural waters. It combines state-of-the-art descriptions of sorption and complexation reactions with easy-to-use menus and options for importing and exporting data from/to Excel.

WEPP (National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory) - The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model is a process-based, distributed parameter, continuous simulation, erosion prediction model for use on personal computers running Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP.

Other software sources/lists:

USGS Water Resources General Software Page

Installation Instructions

Links to the TIPS pages for each software package and installation instructions for the latest versions of Hydrology Software are linked below.

Additional Resources

Wyoming Hydrology Database

Wyoming has offered to share their Hydrology Database Shell and associated Data Submittal Spreadsheets with other states and the federal programs. This Shell has empty tables already set up where information on groundwater, surface water and precipitation monitoring sites, groundwater level elevation, stream flow, field water quality, lab water quality and precipitation data can be stored. We hope our work and experience in this area may help other programs.

Wyoming Hydrology Database Information [46 KB]; Wyoming Hydrology Database Shell zip file [51 KB]

Data Submittal Spreadsheets:

Other Resources

West Virginia DEP Geologic Handbook

EPA's Monitoring and Assessing Water Quality Site

PHREEQCI, WATEQ4F, NETPATH-WIN, PHAST, etc; - http://water.usgs.gov/software/lists/geochemical

MINTEQA2, EFDC, EXAMS, etc; - http://www.epa.gov/ceampubl/

AQUATOX, CORMIX, BASINS, etc; - http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/models/

WASP, QUAL2K, etc; - http://www.epa.gov/athens/wwqtsc/