WikiWatershed - A CUAHSI Board Spotlight with Jennifer Merrill
Posted Jun 9, 2025
WikiWatershed: An Open Source Science Gateway Grown From the CUAHSI Community
Authors:
Scott H. Ensign, Ph.D., Assistant Director, Vice President and Research Scientist, Stroud Water Research Center
Jennifer Merrill, Ph.D., Director of Marketing and Communications, Stroud Water Research Center, CUAHSI Board of Directors
Stroud Water Research Center and collaborators including CUAHSI have developed a suite of tools for water resource managers, scientists, educators, and students to evaluate aquatic system responses to watershed processes, conservation actions, and environmental impacts.
Developed over the past 15 years WikiWatershed has over 20,000 registered users around the world. The impacts of this science gateway on research, conservation, and education are as varied as the collaborators who have participated in its development.
Included in the suite is Model My Watershed, a GIS-based watershed modeling tool that uses hydrology, land cover, soils, topography, weather, pollutant discharges, and other environmental data to model sediment and nutrient transport within a watershed.
The rigor of Model My Watershed is recognized by several states, where it can be used as the reference for conservation plans required to meet Clean Water Act regulatory requirements.
While water professionals use the full capabilities of the underlying Generalized Watershed Loading Function – Enhanced, or GWLF-E, model in these applications, the Model My Watershed tool is also widely used for conservation research. Search for “Model My Watershed” in HydroShare for many examples.
Educators have successfully deployed Model My Watershed in classrooms across the U.S. Two examples are WATERS, a collaborative project with the Concord Consortium and also the Shared Waters curriculum.
A user’s Model My Watershed projects can be shared directly to their HydroShare account; moreover, Model My Watershed allows mapping of spatial queries of CUAHSI’s Hydrologic Information System (HIS). The most recent enhancements to expanded its global application for watershed delineation and land cover analysis. Open source curation of Model My Watershed increasingly relies on geospatial modeling experts from Element 84 and LimnoTech developing on Amazon Web Services.
The Monitor My Watershed Data Sharing Portal is optimized for storing, visualizing, and serving real-time sensor data. With over a billion measurements stored and growing by 15 million per month, this AWS-hosted web app implements the Observation Data Model 2.0 (ODM). ODM was developed by the CUAHSI community, which developed ODM to the standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium.
Used by over 100 organizations and 650 individuals, Monitor My Watershed can receive any sensor data posted to the web. It can also receive uploads of users’ single observations of biological and chemical parameters. Monitor My Watershed is catalogued in CUAHSI’s HIS. For more on the history, development, and partnerships contributing to Monitor My Watershed, please read the Hydroinformatics blog post “Monitor My Watershed Helps Lower Barriers for Real-Time Data Sharing.”
WikiWatershed includes two toolsets supporting the collection of environmental data, and they are tightly integrated with Monitor My Watershed for data sharing.
The first is EnviroDIY, which supports over 1,000 registered users focused on expanding capabilities and lowering the costs of sensor-based measurement using programmable data loggers. Workshops (some sponsored by CUAHSI), online resources, and an ecosystem of data logger products help train and serve this user community for a broad range of hydrologic applications.
EnviroDIY workshops are more than learning how to build, deploy, and maintain sensors. They can be team-oriented and fun, too. Photo provided courtesy of Stroud Water Research Center.
WikiWatershed online tools, such as EnviroDIY, can be supported with on-site workshops and technical support. Stroud Center’s Shannon Hicks (center) is pictured here with EPA staff during a workshop at EPA offices in Athens, Ga. Photo provided courtesy of Stroud Water Research Center.
The second is the Leaf Pack Network that supports nearly 2,000 users in their collection of macroinvertebrate data and subsequent interpretation of the biological condition of aquatic systems. Workshops, online resources, macroinvertebrate collection guides, and commercially available kits help sustain this initiative.
LeafPack Network involves students and community members around the world, such as these students in Peru. Photo provided courtesy of Stroud Water Research Center.
The WikiWatershed science gateway is a powerful suite of tools that can help you meet a wide swath of program objectives. From the classroom to the C-suite office, WikiWatershed can help you understand, inform, describe, collaborate, solve, and store the watershed issues you are examining. Check it out at wikiwatershed.org.