Peace River (Florida) — SWAT+ | SWATGenX
SWATGenX statistics for catalog 03100101 encode linked constituent paths, aquifer feedback, and conveyance into upper Charlotte Harbor; embedded cartography mirrors footprint interactively.
The Peace River watershed is a major freshwater contributor to upper Charlotte Harbor in southwest Florida. The basin includes lakes, canals, wetlands, mined uplands, agricultural areas, and urbanizing corridors, creating a complex hydrologic setting where water quality, groundwater interaction, and freshwater inflow management are closely linked. These characteristics make the watershed a useful case study for demonstrating automated, high-resolution SWAT+ model generation with SWATGenX. This page presents a documented SWATGenX model-build snapshot for Peace River HUC8 03100101 and uses it to summarize watershed structure, land-cover composition, climate forcing, hydrography, and management relevance. The presentation does not assert calibration or regulatory readiness; it documents a reproducible SWATGenX export for screening and case-study interpretation in a basin where nutrient delivery, groundwater interaction, wetland storage, and estuarine freshwater inflow constitute linked management considerations.
Why watershed modeling matters
Modeling is needed in the Peace River watershed because downstream conditions depend on both land-based pollutant sources and hydrologic timing. Nutrient loads from agricultural, urban, wetland, and historically altered landscapes must be interpreted together with baseflow, wet-season storage, and freshwater delivery to the lower river and Charlotte Harbor. SWAT+ is suitable for this type of analysis because it represents landscape-to-channel routing, storage features, management operations, and long-term climate forcing within a single watershed model. For estuarine endpoints such as salinity structure, stratification, chlorophyll response, or habitat suitability, the watershed model should be coupled with a hydrodynamic or estuarine water-quality model.
Case study basin: Peace
Below is a documented SWAT+ model-build snapshot for the Peace watershed—the same export class as Watershed Explorer. The metric strip, maps, charts, NHD flowline-length summary by feature class, and fact tables follow from that committed export.
The SWATGenX Peace River build represents the watershed at high spatial detail, with 94,303 HRUs, 8,181 routed channels, 326 lakes and reservoirs, and 3,828 km of NHD-linked stream GIS length. This level of discretization preserves internal watershed structure, including wetlands, canals, lakes, agricultural areas, and low-gradient drainage features that are important for hydrologic and water-quality interpretation. Daily PRISM climate inputs from 2000 through 2024 provide a long forcing period suitable for baseline simulation, calibration, and scenario analysis. Because the basin includes karst and strong groundwater–surface-water interactions, baseflow, recession behavior, and groundwater-related parameters should receive careful calibration before interpreting low-flow nutrient loads.
Counties in the basin overlay: Charlotte, DeSoto, Glades, Hardee, Highlands, Hillsborough, Manatee, Polk, Sarasota.
- Nutrient delivery to the lower Peace and Charlotte Harbor
- Karst, groundwater, and low-flow risk in headwater reaches
- Canals, wet-season storage, and regional supply operations
- Freshwater inflow and salinity in the lower river and estuary
- BMPs and land-management scenarios
Basin distributions (Peace · Florida)
CDL charts use the same basin-clipped raster summary as Explorer flood reports. County population bars roll up the governmental-units overlay by county name so overlapping polygons do not inflate totals.
CDL land cover (basin clip)
CDL cropland & permanent crops (share)
Population by county (overlay)
Land-cover mix (km², CDL clip)
Key facts
The first table lists basin id, climate window, CDL and population context, and the two published stream-length definitions (channel routing versus NHD-linked stream GIS). The strip above still carries headline structure counts (HRUs, channels, lakes).
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| WBD HU8 name | Peace |
| HUC8 | 03100101 |
| WBD region (VPUID) | 0310 |
| Watershed area | 5986.36 km² |
| Stream polylines linked to NHD (segment count) | 9430 |
| Channel routing length (rivs1, projected) | 3177.94 km |
| NHD-linked stream length, GIS projected | 3828.01 km |
| DEM resolution (m) | 30.09 |
| CDL cropland (basin clip) | 216.12 km² |
| CDL wetland (Woody + Herbaceous) | 1575.94 km² |
| CDL developed | 767.81 km² |
| Population (by county, Explorer overlay) | 3,378,035 |
| Counties (gov. units) | 9 |
| Climate period (PRISM header) | 2000-01-01 – 2024-12-31 |
| SWATGenX snapshot ID | 0310/huc8/03100101 |
| Snapshot label | Peace (HUC8 03100101), Florida — SWAT+ workspace (NHDPlus-HR, PRISM, CDL overlays) |
| Model statistics generated (UTC) | 2026-05-04T00:30:18Z |
How to read this table: each row starts from Watershed/Shapes/SWAT_plus_streams.shp, where each segment carries NHDPlusID. Those IDs join to NHDFlowline in the USGS NHDPlus HR HU4 geodatabase (VPUID 0310). Lengths add in EPSG:5070 (planimetric km) and roll up by NHD FType / FCode. Row lengths sum to 3,828.01 km over 9,430 segments.
| NHD class (label) | Length (km) | Share | Segments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Artificial path (NHD)FType 558 · FCode 55800 | 1,652.18 | 43.2% | 4,152 |
| Stream / river (perennial / general)FType 460 · FCode 46006 | 1,195.72 | 31.2% | 2,614 |
| Stream / river (intermittent)FType 460 · FCode 46003 | 567.83 | 14.8% | 1,603 |
| Canal / ditchFType 336 · FCode 33600 | 378.39 | 9.9% | 875 |
| Underground conduitFType 566 · FCode 56600 | 18.9 | 0.5% | 29 |
| ConnectorFType 334 · FCode 33400 | 10.39 | 0.3% | 143 |
| Stream / riverFType 460 · FCode 46000 | 4.6 | 0.1% | 14 |
The county total matches the bar chart: one value per county from the Explorer overlay, written to avoid double-counting where unit polygons overlap. Screening context only—not a regulatory design population.
The values reported on this page describe a documented SWATGenX model-build snapshot for Peace River (HUC8 03100101): TxtInOut, Watershed/Shapes, PRISM headers, basin-clipped CDL, NHDPlus HR flowline classes joined to SWAT stream GIS, and county-level population from the Explorer overlay. They are intended for screening, model documentation, and case-study interpretation; they should not be interpreted as regulatory determinations or independently certified agency statistics. Catalog listings can change; committed statistics are not fetched live.
What SWATGenX generates
SWATGenX clips national inputs, performs watershed delineation using the QSWAT+ / SWAT+ Editor workflow, and exports SQLite and TxtInOut files that can be reviewed in SWAT+ Editor. For a basin of this size, the workflow provides a reproducible path from WBD and NHDPlus-HR hydrography to a reviewable SWAT+ model structure. A full calibration study would use USGS streamgages near Bartow, Zolfo Springs, and Arcadia, with nutrient and suspended-sediment observations added where water-quality simulation is required. Lakes, canals, withdrawals, storage operations, and management schedules should be represented according to the objective of the specific study.
Related on SWATGenX
National datasets (labels)
Dataset versions, stewardship, and a fuller provenance narrative: Methodology & provenance.
Citations for on-page facts
- Hydrologic catalog: USGS WBD — Peace watershed (HUC8 03100101)
- Hydrography: USGS NHDPlus HR: each SWAT stream segment (SWAT_plus_streams.shp) carries NHDPlusID and is matched to NHDFlowline in the HU4 geodatabase; lengths are summed by FType/FCode in EPSG:5070 (planimetric km).
- Land cover (CDL): USDA NASS Cropland Data Layer (clipped to basin)
- Climate forcing: PRISM Climate Group (OSU), daily met files referenced in weather-sta.cli
- Regional population context: Explorer governmental-units overlay: one population value per county (same logic as the bar chart), so overlapping polygons do not double-count.
- Figures: Recharts from committed chartData; CDL series from cropland_summary classes and crop_classes. Optional static figure script: render_state_swat_modeling_figures.py.
- Explorer preview map: Peace watershed preview PNG (original_images/states/florida_map_preview/Peace_watershed_huc8_03100101.png), optimized into /static/images/… via original_images/build_and_deploy_images.sh; USGS WBD HUC8 03100101.
- Basin DEM & CDL maps: PNG exports from scripts/render_state_swat_basin_maps.py (report_analytics DEM hillshade + CDL land use, same cartographic layout as flood PDF maps); sources under original_images/states/florida_map_preview/.
Open Peace in Watershed Explorer
Preview uses the USGS WBD boundary with NHDPlus HR context, zoomed to basin extent on a Streets-style basemap. Follow the card into the live workspace (HUC8 03100101).
