Enhancing the SWAT model for creating efficient rainwater harvesting and reuse strategies to improve water resources management

Rain barrels/cisterns are a type of green infrastructure (GI) practice that can help restore urban hydrology. Roof runoff captured and stored by rain barrels/cisterns can serve as a valuable resource for landscape irrigation, which would reduce municipal water usage and decrease runoff that other stormwater infrastructures need to treat. The expected benefits of rainwater harvesting and reuse with rain barrels/cisterns are comprehensive but neither systematically investigated nor well documented. A comprehensive tool is needed to help stakeholders develop efficient strategies to harvest rainwater for landscape irrigation with rain barrels/cisterns. This study further improved the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) in simulating urban drainage networks by coupling the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) 's closed pipe drainage network (CPDN) simulation methods with the SWAT model that was previously improved for simulating the impacts of rainwater harvesting for landscape irrigation with rain barrels/cisterns. The newly improved SWAT or SWAT-CPDN was applied to simulate the urban hydrology of the Brentwood watershed (Austin, TX) and evaluate the long-term effects of rainwater harvesting for landscape irrigation with rain barrels/cisterns at the field and watershed scales. The results indicated that the SWAT-CPDN could improve the prediction accuracy of urban hydrology with good performance in simulating discharges (15 min, daily, and monthly), evapotranspiration (monthly), and leaf area index (monthly). The impacts of different scenarios of rainwater harvesting and reuse strategies (rain barrel/ cistern sizes, percentages of suitable areas with rain barrels/cisterns implemented, auto landscape irrigation rates, and landscape irrigation starting times) on each indicator (runoff depth, discharge volume, peak runoff, peak discharge, combined sewer overflow -CSO, freshwater demand, and plant growth) at the field or watershed scale varied, providing insights for the long-term multi-functional impacts (stormwater management and rainwater harvesting/reuse) of rainwater harvesting for landscape irrigation with rain barrels/cisterns. The varied rankings of scenarios found for achieving each goal at the field or watershed scale indicated that tradeoffs in rainwater harvesting and reuse strategies exist for various goals, and the strategies should be evaluated individually for different goals to optimize the strategies. Efficient rainwater harvesting and reuse strategies at the field or watershed scale can be created by stakeholders with the assist of the SWAT-CPDN to reduce runoff depth, discharge volume, peak runoff, peak discharge, CSO, and freshwater demand, as well as improve plant growth.