SWATGenXSWATGenX

Education

Interactive water lessons

Short, hands-on lessons about where water goes — each one driven by real SWATGenX model output, not canned animation. Every number's source is shown on the page. New lessons are added as we generate them from our simulations.

  • Real model output
  • Every number sourced
  • A growing collection
RAINAQUIFERSOILstreamcanopyrunoffinfiltrationrecharge → baseflow

Most explanations of the water cycle are diagrams that could describe anywhere. These are different: each lesson runs on the actual output of a SWATGenX model of a real place, so the splits you watch — how much rain runs off, soaks in, recharges the aquifer, or returns as baseflow — are the numbers the model produced, labeled with where they came from.

It is the same platform that builds SWAT+ models for any US watershed, turned toward teaching: we take a finished simulation and let you play with what it means.

The lessons

Two interactive journeys are live now, plus the long-form guide that hosts the PFAS animation. Pick one and press play.

The Water Journey
Teaches: Where a year of rain actually goes
Follow a raindrop from the sky to the estuary — above and below ground. Release drops over a real American basin and watch a SWAT+ water balance emerge: canopy, runoff, soil, aquifer, stream.
Open the lesson
The PFAS Journey
Teaches: Why some pollution never leaves
Press play on 53 years: a PFAS plume grows under an old firefighting-foam site while the molecules crawl past water — every number from a real SWAT+/MODFLOW 6 model of a legacy AFFF release.
Play the journey
PFAS fate & transport guide
Teaches: The full field guide, compartment by compartment
Go deeper than the animation: the chemistry, the mechanism in each compartment, the governing relationships, and a live 3D case study — with the PFAS Journey embedded where the story needs it.
Read the guide

More lessons in development

This is a growing collection. As our simulations produce results worth walking through, we turn them into lessons. These are the topics we are actively building — driven, like the rest, by our own model output rather than stock illustration.

Nutrients & nonpoint source
How nitrogen and phosphorus leave farms and cities and reach streams — from our SWAT+ water-quality runs.
In development
The carbon & soil-water budget
Where water and carbon sit in soils and plants across a season, and what moves them.
In development
Climate & the changing water balance
How a warmer, shifting climate rewrites the same raindrop journey — driven by our climate-forced simulations.
In development

Want to see the science these lessons come from? Explore the PFAS fate & transport guide, the Florida nonpoint-source showcase, or the methodology behind every model.

Build the model behind a lesson

Every lesson starts as a real SWAT+ model. You can generate one for any US watershed — free with an account — and see the same water balance for your own basin.