WETBUD Support, Maintenance and Improvements

The PI of this proposal, Dr. Agioutantis, was part of the team that developed Wetbud under a previously funded grant to Virginia Tech (RFP#2: Water Budget Modeling – see: https://www.wetlands.com/wetland-research-initiative), where UK was a sub-recipient to that award. Wetbud is a computer WindowsTM based PC software package for estimating wetland water budgets using available weather data and site-specific topographic, soil and geohydrologic data, coupled with mass balance mathematics. Wetbud is primarily intended as a planning tool for use in the design of created wetlands but it can also be applied to existing undisturbed wetlands where the required input parameters can be specified. Wetbud can be run in its basic form where wetland topography, soil parameters and groundwater flux are simplified, or in the advanced form, where these threedimensional topography and hydrologic parameters are included in a more complex approach via integration of MODFLOW. The basic version of Wetbud now also features a “Wizard” version that comes pre-loaded with 114 pre-selected weather data for a number of states in the eastern US. The PI of this proposal led the software programming effort for Wetbud and is proposing to continue maintenance and development of this package. Note that the package is currently free to use for the design of constructed wetlands.