The objectives of this term project are to:

• Do an atmospheric water balance over Texas utilizing GIS for data processing and result presentation.
• Develop and document a procedure by which an atmospheric water balance can be performed over any general land area for which data is available.
• Become more familiar with Arcview as a tool in surface water hydrology.

Available Data and Data Analysis Tools

• A programs which generalizes a region's boundary by breaking it into arcs of a defined distance
• A program which takes the generalized border and finds the centerline
• A program which takes the center points and a mesh on which the fluxes are defined and finds the flux on that center point.
• A program which takes those fluxes to compute the net flux. A grid of fluxes is available for Texas, with the data at 12 hour intervals for the months of January to June, 1991. And while this project will focus heavily on Texas, it is noted that there are also data files available for the whole earth on a monthly basis for a period of 26 months.

  Procedure:

  The first step will be to become familiar with the data and programs already available. The existing programs will then be examined and documented. The the existing data will be put in the proper form to perform the water balance. While performing the water balance over the region of Texas, a general procedure for any given region will be developed and documented. The results of the water balance will be presented in Arcview.

  Objectives

  I hope to not only obtain a better understanding of hydrology and water balances, but also to become more familiar with the programming used in analysis and in the use of Arcview.

  Note: This page may be revised as the project develops. My e-mail address is:

  c.how@mail.utexas.edu

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