Open-source GIS software and components for modelling watershed phenomena

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) enables the simulation of watershed and river basin quantity and quality of surface and ground water under the influence of land use, management, and climate change. It can be used to monitor and control soil erosion, non-point source pollution and basin management. The recent version (SWAT+) was implemented by a dedicated QGIS plugin (QSWAT) widening the userbase and the potential modelling application worldwide. QSWAT, along with additional software for preparing the input dataset and for performing the calibration/validation phase, further extends the watershed modelling capabilities. Such tools and the growing diffusion of public open geospatial datasets are expected to increase the range of applications especially with the availability climate projections datasets. The latter will enable users to simulate all the watersoil phenomena at watershed level under future conditions to better understand and plan suitable action for preserving the natural resources.