Observed Model Fitting

The Observed Model Fit tool compares measured watershed responses against a completed WEPP Cloud simulation. It aggregates modelled hillslope and channel outputs via the interchange Parquet assets and computes daily and annual skill metrics for each supplied observed measure.

Prerequisites

A completed WEPP Cloud run for the project.
Observed outlet data for at least one supported measure.
A climate configuration that exposes observed years (the control remains hidden until observed climate data are available).

Preparing Observed Data

Paste comma-delimited text into the Observed control. The first column must be Date in MM/DD/YYYY format. Include any subset of these columns you want to evaluate:

Streamflow (mm)
Sed Del (kg)
Total P (kg)
Soluble Reactive P (kg)
Particulate P (kg)

Column names must match exactly, including units. Rows with blank values are ignored. Extra columns are ignored.

Example CSV snippet

Date,Streamflow (mm),Sed Del (kg)
01/03/2016,0.8,12.4
01/04/2016,1.5,18.0
01/05/2016,,17.2

The blank entry on 01/05 is skipped during fitting.

Running the Fit

Navigate to the Observed Control for the active run.
Paste the prepared CSV text into the Observed Timeseries field.
Click Run Model Fit. The job is dispatched to the WEPP Cloud queue.
When processing completes, follow the “View Model Fit Results” link.

Report Contents

The generated report includes:

Daily and annual statistics (NSE, PBIAS, RMSE, etc.) for each provided measure.
Counts of valid observations used in each comparison.
Downloadable CSV summaries saved under the project’s observed/ directory.

Troubleshooting

Control hidden – Ensure the climate configuration advertises observed years and that the WEPP run finished successfully.
Parsing failure – Confirm the header includes the Date column plus supported measure names and that the file is comma-separated.
Empty report – Only overlapping calendar days between the observed file and the simulated series are scored; unmatched dates are dropped.