Top digital modeling scientists share expertise in Greece
Soil and Water Assessment Tool conference covers latest science around AgriLife Research-developed tool
Nearly 150 computer modeling scientists and researchers from 32 countries across five continents converged at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece for the 37th international conference on the latest applications and developments of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool, SWAT.
SWAT is a predictive computer modeling system that can use from a few data points at field scale to millions of data points at basin scale. The data encompass climate trends, environments and behavioral characteristics to provide decision-making insights for producers, land managers and conservationists at all scales of a given watershed.
The conference, held June 17-19 following two days of workshops, was organized by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in collaboration with the inventors of SWAT from Texas A&M AgriLife Research and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, USDA-ARS, in Temple. The team also celebrated 25 years of SWAT conferences, marking a journey that began in Germany in 2001.
“Researchers from across the globe continue to share how they’re applying this tool to their own watersheds,” said Raghavan “Srini” Srinivasan, Ph.D., director of the Texas A&M AgriLife Blackland Research and Extension Center at Temple. “The breadth of ideas we saw this year — from climate resilience to new AI-driven extension tools — shows just how far predictive watershed modeling has come.”
Modeling scientists spur SWAT tech evolution
Technical sessions over the three-day conference covered a host of large-scale applications; climate variability modeling; sensitivity and calibration methods; biofuel and plant growth modeling; environmental applications; best management practices; hydrology; database and GIS development; landscape processes; pesticide and pharmaceutical transport, and groundwater hydrology, among other topics.
A book of abstracts and photo gallery from the event are published on the SWAT website.
Online and in-person participants were able to choose from four hands-on workshops: an introduction to editor interfaces; sensitivity analysis, calibration and validation; source-code development and GitHub collaboration workflows; and new methods for representing nature-based solutions in watershed management.
SWAT publications forthcoming
Selected papers from the conference will be eligible for special issues of the journal Hydrology and Water Resources focused on advances in SWAT applications for hydrology modeling, climate resilience and sustainable land-water management later this year.
In addition to the annual conference, Srinivasan, who is also a professor in the Texas A&M Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology and the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and his team at Temple have continued to be major contributors to the development of SWAT and to pioneering new uses for the tool.
“Our work continues to open doors to global conversations about the possibilities for SWAT and other predictive modeling systems developed by AgriLife Research scientists,” he said.
