Hydrodynamic modeling of Edmonton storm-water ponds

Computational models often are applied to simulate water quality for management of natural and constructed aquatic systems. As part of a larger study, a three-dimensional hydrodynamic and biogeochemical model was applied to three storm-water ponds in the City of Edmonton to examine relations between nutrients and eutrophication. This paper reports on the calibration and validation procedure of the hydrodynamic component of the model suite. It was found that correcting surface heat fluxes for atmospheric instability (defined as the difference between air and water temperature) led to greater latent and sensible heat loss (up to ~ 32% and ~ 34%, respectively) and resulted in the most accurate simulation of observed temperature time series (root-mean-square error, RMSE < 3.03 °C). The calibration also involved tuning of albedo and light attenuation coefficients, which were optimized by applying a global sensitivity analysis tool that showed the model was more sensitive to albedo. Global sensitivity analysis, can be applied to develop a resulting limited area, which is shown to be a valuable tool to optimize the calibration process.