[R-sig-eco] Distributed hydrological model in R

[Mauricio Zambrano-Bigiarini]

On 19/04/13 13:43, Dominik Reusser wrote:
> On 18.04.2013 17:13, Mauricio Zambrano-Bigiarini wrote:
>> On 16/04/13 16:27, Dominik Reusser wrote:
>>> Dear all,
>>> does anybody know of an implementation of a spatially distributed
>>> hydrological model implemented in R. I know there is a number of lumped
>>> models in HydroMad and RHydro (none of them on CRAN).
>>
>> Hi Dominik,
>>
>> The SWAT model (USDA) is available on CRAN:
>>
>> http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/SWATmodel
>>
>> but I've never tried it.
>>
>>
>> It is a spatially distributed model, where you can use different
>> properties for each Hydrological Response Unit (HRU). However, it is
>> not a fully-distributed model but a semi-distributed one.
>>
>>
>> What spatial scale are you interested in ?
>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Mauricio Zambrano-Bigiarini, Ph.D
>>
> Dear Felix, dear Mauricio
> thanks for the informations - great to get response related to hydrology
> on this list :-)

:)

>
> topmodel is one of the lumped models - not distributed.
> The SWAT package provides a basic interface to the files of the
> stand-alone SWAT programme. To run the model, it calls the R-external
> SWAT-executable.

Not exactly. Reading the manual of the SWATmodel it seems that the 
package runs an external executable file. However, reading the .tar.gz 
files you realise that the executable files are only build during the 
installation of the package from the fortran source code.
Anyway, it is not a "pure R" implementation, and the input files require 
to be prepared with a GIS software.

Some time ago I was wondering if it would worth the fight to implement a 
semi-distributed or fully-distributed model in R. My conclusion at that 
time was that most of the time existing models are written in C or 
Fortran, just because they are unbeatably fast for processing large 
amount of grid cells (as typical of large river basins).

It would be good to know what you, Felix or any other hydrologist around 
think about this.

All the best,

Mauricio

PS,
If you find a hydrological  model that read data from R without calling 
an external file, please share it :)


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>
> What I am looking for is a distributed (or semi-distributed) model that
> will take data from within R without going through external files. So I
> will keep looking...
>
> Kind regards
> Dominik
>
>
>
>