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In any river system, water users require water for a range of purposes including:

  • irrigating crops;
  • urban, industrial and rural stock and domestic use; and
  • managing environmental water entitlements, which may or may not result in an extraction from the river.

The Water User node provides functionality needed in Source to be able to model water use. The functions performed by the Water User node include managing orders and extractions (either with or without an accounting system), setting priorities to determine the sources used for extraction and directing the return of surplus water to rivers, groundwater (by infiltration) and water user storages.

A water user is modelled as comprising three components: a water distributor, a demand model and (in some cases) one or more water user storage units. Of these, the water distributor and the water user storage components are integral parts of the Water User node but the demand model is separate. These three components exchange information as illustrated in Figure 1.

  • The water distributor component manages orders, extractions and returns. It manages the distribution and carries out its function through an exchange of information with the other two components;
  • The demand model can be chosen by the modeller from one of the options available in Source. Alternatively, new demand models can be developed and linked to the water distributor using the ‘plug-in’ concept; and
  • The water user storage component is used to simulate an off-river storage associated with a given water user. It can represent:
  • an on-farm storage (OFS)
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     used for irrigation;
  • an off-river storage used for urban demands; or
  • an off-river storage used to meet environmental demands.
Figure 1. Water user model components

At least one Supply Point node is also required to determine where water is to be extracted. Extractions may be from a regulated river, from an unregulated river or from groundwater. The Supply Point node is also used to specify a number of other factors, including delivery efficiency, travel time, pumping capacity and the flow rate above which overbank flows occur. More details are available in the Supply point node - SRG entry.

The Water User node provides the same input to both the rules-based and optimisation-based ordering schemes available in Source. Consequently, in the model run sequence, the processing associated with the water user occurs before the ordering phase starts.

Return Flows

The Return Flow module enables the user to specify:

  • Return flow properties, such as constituent concentrations, at the point where the flow leaves the water user
  • Return flow processes, such as Linear Storage Routing, that occur after the flow leaves the water user

Linear Storage Routing

Conceptually, Linear Storage Routing describes overland flow processes; it is intended to model return flow from the point where it leaves the water user to the point where it re-joins the river system. 

Note

Linear Storage Routing is usually used in conjunction with a Straight Through Routing link to model overland return flow from a water user to a confluence. It can be used in conjunction with Lag or Storage Routing links, but the processes in these links will be applied to return flow that has already been routed by the Linear Storage Routing model.

The Linear Storage Routing model routes return flow through two parallel linear-stores:

  • The first store represents quickflow, the proportion of return flow that becomes surface runoff, also known as direct runoff
  • The second store represents slowflow, the proportion of return flow that becomes shallow-subsurface flow

The total return flow that reaches the river system is the sum of quickflow and slowflow.

The Linear Storage Routing equations are the same as for the Linear Routing Module described in the IHACRES-CMD - SRG, except that effective rainfall U is replaced with return flow at the point it leaves the water user.

Scale

Point scale, any time-step except that the choice of time-step may be constrained by the demand model time-step, such as when used in conjunction with the IQQM Crop Model (see IQQM Crop Model SRG) which is daily time-step only.

Principal developer

eWater CRC.

Scientific provenance

The Water User node is purpose-built for Source. It is based not so much on scientific principles as on distribution rules that can be independently verified.

Version

Source version 2.17

Dependencies

The Water User node must always be connected to at least one Supply Point node (it may be connected to many). It also needs to be connected to a demand model or data.

Data

Details on data are provided in the Obsolete - Source User Guide.

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