The paper “Modeling water quantity and sulfate concentrations in the Devils Lake watershed using coupled SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2” is accepted for publication in JAWRA

A paper led by ESSP Ph. D. student, Afshin Shabani was accepted for publication in the Journal of the American Water Resource Association. While quite a few papers have been published on simulating rising water in Devils Lake, this is the first report investigating both quantity and quality of the water in Devils Lake. In order to do this, Afshin used two models, SWAT and CE-QUAL-W2. The first one, SWAT simulates the stream flows in Devils Lake, which are used as inputs to drive the second model, CE-QUAL-W2 to simulate the physical and chemical properties of the lake. The results show that draining water from the two outlets have lowered the water level of Devils Lake by 0.7 m. This draining, however, raises the sulfate concentrations in Sheyenne River above the ND water quality standard. The coupled model can be used as a decision making tool in managing or mitigating flooding water in Devils Lake.