Hello Community,
I ran the SWY model to estimate the potential benefits of forest restoration for water resources. When I calculated the statistics for QF, B, L Sum, L Availability, and L Availability Sum within a watershed, I found that the differences between the current land cover/land use and the restoration scenario were very small. My question is, would it be acceptable to generate statistics only for the potential restored area by comparing the current land use with the restoration scenario outputs generated by the SWY model, instead of for the entire watershed?
Thank yo uvery much,
Marcelo
Hi mhmatsu, thanks for your question. I think the answer depends on your project objectives. Of course, you can report statistical summaries on whatever you want to, as long as it’s relevant to your project questions and you clearly define what you are reporting. One thing you want to be sure of is that you are not avoiding any errors or issues. in the outputs if you do only compare the restored areas. So you should think about the logic of your results. If the restored area is small compared to the watershed, then the overall change will be low. If the restoration is removing urban area and planting forest vs improving ag practices ,then the former should show greater change in flows. The bottom line is you want to check the logic of your input and output data and be logical in your reporting based on project objectives. I hope that helps. If you’d like to send me a summary of your project and some stats, I’d be happy to have a look.
Thanks a lot Nadine! It is very helpful.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.