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Hydrologic Modeling of Pocono Creek Watershed
The Pocono Creek watershed is a 46.5 square mile basin located in Monroe County, PA, within the Delaware River Basin. Pocono Creek has very good water and biological quality and are designated as Special Protection Waters by the State of Delaware River Basin Commission. The Creek has a wild brown trout population, significant to outdoor recreation, which is the largest economic generator of the region. The population of Monroe County is projected to grow by 60% by 2020. Potential impacts of the projected growth and land use change include degradation and loss of the forested land and agricultural lands, depletion of ground water and stream flows, and the loss of the Creek’s wild brown trout. The effect of urbanization is to increase imperviousness in the watershed, thereby reducing infiltration and groundwater recharge. Reduced infiltration and increased runoff rates increase peak flows during storm events and reduce base flow, a component of the hydrologic cycle which is critical to sustaining stream flows during dry periods. A distributed hydrologic model is being developed using the Surface Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) which is built within a graphical user interface (GUI) and a Geographical Information System (GIS) platform. The model will be used to achieve primarily three objectives: 1) predict the effect of projected land use changes (increased imperviousness) in Pocono Creek watershed on reduced monthly ground water recharge rates; 2) predict the effect of projected land use changes on altering median monthly stream flows; and 3) compute the effect of projected land use changes on altering the frequency of minimum (i.e., base flow) and high stream flows. The model is currently being calibrated using available data, and will be updated as new data become available. The model outputs will be linked to a USGS groundwater flow model MODFLOW to simulate projected increased groundwater withdrawals on groundwater/surface-water interactions, and to the Pennsylvania Instream Flow Model (PIFM) to establish a relationship between both groundwater withdrawals and projected surface water reductions on habitat at the watershed scale.
Contact: Mohamed M. Hantush, USEPA, (EIMS #117863)