How are landscape characteristics and monitoring data linked to the spatial framework in SPARROW models?
|Back to Top| SPARROW provides a predictive tool that integrates many types of data. Calibration data are derived from water-quality monitoring information at sites located throughout a study area. Those data are associated with reaches in a digital stream network to define spatial relations among the monitoring sites and among their drainage areas. Detailed geospatial data bases are then linked with the stream network drainage areas to define the basin characteristics in all of the areas that drain to monitoring locations and to all individual stream reaches. Once the linkages are developed, all of these types of data are combined in one data base that is used for model development. The figure below provides a small example and illustration of the spatial framework that forms the basis of SPARROW as described above. The dark black line represents the drainage boundary for a watershed. At the downstream end of the watershed is a monitoring site that can be used for model calibration. U
