Name: SedHydro
Availability: https://github.com/CH-Earth/
Documentation: https://github.com/CH-Earth/
Collaborators: Arman Haddadchi (University of Calgary); Martyn Clark (University of Calgary); Frank Han (University of Calgary); and others.
SedHydro is a hydrological-model-coupled, multi-fraction erosion and sediment transport frame- work designed for simulation of sediment generation, transport, deposition, and re-entrainment across river basins of any scale. The framework is modular and hydrology-model agnostic, allowing coupling with any hydrological model capable of providing the required hydrological forcing and river hydraulic variables. The framework has been developed to provide a flexible and computa- tionally scalable environment to coupling externally simulated hydrology with spatially distributed erosion processes and physically based river sediment routing.
The development of SedHydro was motivated by several limitations commonly encountered in existing hydro-sediment modelling systems. Many current approaches provide inadequate representation of geomorphic processes within river networks despite their strong influence on sediment transport dynamics. Other challenges include limited representation of hillslope sediment connectivity, the inability to route individual sediment fractions independently, insufficient treatment of cold-region processes, dependence on specific hydrological model structures, and computational constraints that restrict applications to large river basins or long simulation periods. SedHydro was designed specifically to overcome these limitations while maintaining flexibility and scalability across a wide range of environmental and modelling conditions.
To address these challenges, SedHydro integrates multiple sediment-process components within a unified modular framework. The framework combines spatially distributed erosion generation, hillslope sediment delivery routing, physically based river sediment transport, multi-fraction sediment dynamics, and depressional storage attenuation. These processes are organized into independent but dynamically connected modules, allowing each component to interact while remaining interchangeable and extensible. This modular architecture facilitates the development and testing of alternative erosion formulations, sediment routing approaches, storage representations, optimization workflows, and hydrological coupling strategies, making SedHydro a flexible platform for both research and operational hydro-sediment modelling applications.
Forthcoming …
About CAPE: We bring together observations, models, and data science to improve understanding and prediction of hydrological processes across scales from hillslopes to continents.
Land and Water Acknowledgement: We respectfully acknowledge that we live and work on Treaty 7 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis, Tsuut'ina, Stoney, and Blackfoot. We thank these nations for their care and stewardship over this land and water, and we pay respect to the ancestors of these places.