THRESHOLD EFFECTS IN HRU DEFINITION OF

THE SOIL AND WATER ASSESSMENT TOOL

Y. Her, J. Frankenberger, I. Chaubey, R. Srinivasan

ABSTRACT. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) uses hydrologic response units (HRUs) as the basic unit of all
model calculations. ArcSWAT, the ArcGIS interface for SWAT, allows users to specify thresholds of land cover, soil, and
slope in defining HRUs to improve the computational efficiency of simulations while keeping key landscape features of a
watershed in the hydrologic modeling. However, this study found that applying commonly used thresholds in defining
HRUs may lead to considerable loss of information about the watershed landscape, emphasizing larger soil types on
smaller land covers once the land covers meet a threshold for land cover, and potentially changing average slopes. These
changes often have a minor effect on water yield and streamflow simulations by SWAT but a larger effect on sediment and
nutrient load simulations, which are more sensitive to slope and soil type and are more influential on outputs at the sub-
watershed than at the watershed outlet. Study results can help modelers improve their understanding of the HRU strategy
for simplifying watershed representation while maintaining major landscape features and make decisions in the HRU de-
lineation process to minimize the chance of biased simulations.
Keywords. Hydrologic response units, Hydrology, Soil and Water Assessment Tool, SWAT, Water quality.

T
he Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a
watershed-scale model capable of simulating the
hydrology and water quality processes of a water-
shed with detailed information on agricultural
management practices. It balances the need for efficiency
of computation with representation of watershed variability
by using hydrologic response units (HRUs) as the basic
unit of all model calculations. HRUs are physically homo-
geneous non-contiguous areas assumed to respond similarly
to inputs (Li et al., 1977). In SWAT, HRUs are defined as
unique combinations of land cover, soil, and/or slope clas-
ses distributed over a subwatershed, and a single HRU can
be found at different locations within the subwatershed.
Although this strategy does not consider hydrologic con-
nectivity between the HRUs, it is an effective way to sim-
plify representation and simulation of watershed processes
in modeling (Gassman et al., 2007).
ArcSWAT (Winchell et al., 2010) allows users to speci-
fy two types of thresholds when defining the watershed
Submitted for review in June 2014 as manuscript number NRES
10805; approved for publication by the Natural Resources &
Environmental Systems Community of ASABE in February 2015.
The authors are Younggu Her, ASABE Member, Postdoctoral
Research Associate, and Jane Frankenberger, ASABE Member,
Professor, Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue
University, West Lafayette, Indiana; Indrajeet Chaubey, ASABE
Member, Professor, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary
Sciences and Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering,
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana; Raghavan Srinivasan,
ASABE Member, Professor, Department of Ecosystem Sciences and
Management and Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering,
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. Corresponding author:
Indrajeet Chaubey, 550 Stadium Mall Drive, Purdue University, West
Lafayette, IN 47907-2093; phone: 765-494-3258; e-mail: ichaubey
@purdue.edu.
representation. The subwatershed threshold (minimum area
required to initiate stream networks) is applied to define
subwatershed boundaries based on topography. The HRU
threshold is employed to further discretize each subwater-
shed considering landscape heterogeneity found from its
land use, soil, and slope. Arabi et al. (2006), Kumar and
Merwade (2009), and Cho et al. (2010) investigated the
effects of the subwatershed threshold, but the effects of
HRU thresholds on landscape representations and resulting
model predictions have not been well studied. Thresholds
from 5% to 15% are commonly used (e.g., EPA, 2013; Han
et al., 2012; Sexton et al., 2010; Srinivasan et al., 2010),
although some model applications have been run with low
or no thresholds or when it is important to preserve each
unique landscape feature in the model representation
(Chaubey et al., 2010; Chiang et al., 2010).
Two potential concerns arise from the reduction in num-
ber of HRUs as a result of the applied threshold. The first is
that the loss of smaller land cover/soil combinations can
result in model outputs that are less representative of the
watershed as a whole, potentially biasing results if some
combinations are disproportionately eliminated. The second
concern arises when the model is used to assess the effec-
tiveness of conservation practices or the results of land use
change in specific locations. It is not possible to represent
the conservation practices in land cover/soil combinations
that are not part of the final HRU definition.
Loss of information is inevitable whenever a non-zero
HRU threshold is applied, since minor watershed landscape
features are ignored in SWAT modeling. Entropy as a
measure of information can be used to quantify the amount
of spatial heterogeneity contained in maps. Entropy has
been a useful concept and tool for understanding infor-
mation in a variety of hydrologic modeling applications,

Transactions of the ASABE

Vol. 58(2): 367-378 © 2015 American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers ISSN 2151-0032 DOI 10.13031/trans.58.10805 367
such as model selection (calibration), optimization, and
uncertainty assessment (Amorosho and Espildora, 1973;
Singh, 1997, 2011). Haverkamp et al. (2002) quantified
heterogeneity (or information) in the source data (land use
and soil) layers and HRUs defined in SWAT using an en-
tropy function and compared entropy measures calculated
with different subwatershed thresholds to identify “appro-
priate levels of discretization” in SWAT modeling. Land-
scape heterogeneity decreases with an increase in HRU
threshold so that an inverse relationship between the
amount of information incorporated into SWAT modeling
and the HRU threshold level would be obvious. However,
it is still not clear how much loss of information contained
in HRU maps is sensitive to the thresholds.
The objectives of this study are to (1) investigate how
HRU thresholds affect representation of watershed land-
scape, (2) quantify the information loss when non-zero
thresholds are used, (3) evaluate the impact of HRU thresh-
olds on model prediction, and (4) provide guidance to
Figure 1. Flowchart of HRU definition algorithm of ArcSWAT.
368
SWAT modelers on selecting appropriate thresholds based
on their modeling goals and data characteristics. In addi-
tion, this study demonstrates detailed processes for defining
HRUs with thresholds to improve understanding of the
landscape representation mechanisms of ArcSWAT.
HOW ARCSWAT APPLIES THRESHOLDS
IN DEFINING HRUS
In the SWAT setup, HRUs are defined separately for
each subwatershed, based on land cover, soil, and slope in a
specific subwatershed. Thresholds for HRU definition are
sequentially applied to land covers, soils in each land cov-
er, and slopes in each combination of land cover and slope
(Winchell et al., 2010) in a process illustrated in figure 1. If
a land cover percentage in the subwatershed is below the
land cover threshold, no HRU for that specific land cover
will be defined, regardless of the distribution of soils, and
the land cover areas will be reapportioned into the other
qualified land covers. ArcSWAT (ver. 2009.10.1) also pro-
TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASABE
vides an option of exempting specific land covers from
being screened with the thresholds so that users can keep
the land covers that do not meet the threshold in modeling
(Winchell et al., 2010, pp. 138-140). The soil threshold is
applied only within the remaining land covers. If all soil
areas in a land cover in a subwatershed are below the
threshold, then one HRU will be defined with the soil that
has the highest percentage. The slope threshold is then ap-
plied to the remaining land cover-soil-slope combinations
in the subwatershed. Finally, ArcSWAT checks if every
subwatershed has at least one HRU; if not, ArcSWAT se-
lects the combination that has the greatest land cover, soil,
and slope areas as the only HRU.
A hypothetical example subwatershed (fig. 2) shows the
various potential situations. For brevity, only land cover
and soil are considered in this example. The land cover and
soil thresholds for HRU definition are set as 20% and 10%.
Because the urban area is less than the 20% threshold, its
area is reapportioned to the other land covers using equa-
tion 1. The soil threshold is only examined on the cropland
and forest areas, and because the percentage of cropland in
soil 1 is below the soil threshold of 10%, no HRU contain-
ing soil 1 is defined, and the area is reapportioned to soil 2.
HRU i =

 j =1Non − HRU combination 
M
 (1)
HRU Combinationi 1 +  tively, and employed in defining subwatersheds and HRUs
N

  i =1HRU combinationi 
where HRU is an area of an HRU after the reapportion,
HRU Combination is an area of a combination of soil and
slope that satisfies a threshold set in a land cover before the
reapportion, the index (i) represents an individual HRU or
HRU Combination, ranging from 1 to the number (N) of
HRUs in a land cover, Non-HRU Combination is an area of
a combination of soil and slope that does not satisfy the
threshold, and the index (j) represents an individual Non-
HRU Combination, ranging from 1 to the number (M) of
Non-HRU Combinations in a land cover. Then, N + M is
equal to the number of all the combinations of soil and
slope areas in a subwatershed. As illustrated in this simple
example, thresholds tend to favor land cover-soil combina-
tions that are located in smaller land covers where each soil
type is more likely to meet the threshold, potentially intro-
ducing a bias in representation of the watershed landscape.
MATERIAL AND METHOD
HRU DEFINITION FOR THE ST. JOSEPH WATERSHED
WITH DIFFERENT THRESHOLDS
HRU definition with various thresholds was applied to
the St. Joseph watershed, an 8-digit hydrologic unit code
(HUC) headwater watershed of 2,809 km2 in the western
Lake Erie basin. The watershed covers portions of Indiana,
Ohio, and Michigan (fig. 3). Row crop agriculture is the
dominant land use activity, with corn and soybeans as the
major crops in the watershed. Spatial data layers including
elevation, land cover, and soil maps were derived from the
National Elevation Dataset (NED), the Soil Survey Geo-
graphic (SSURGO) database, and the National Agricultural
Statistics Service Crop Data Layer (NASS-CDL), respec-
in ArcSWAT. A channel initiation threshold area of
5,000 ha resulted in 39 subwatersheds.
The ArcSWAT strategy of defining HRUs based on land
cover and soil was reproduced with mathematical algo-
rithms (fig. 1) in a spreadsheet independent from
ArcSWAT. Areas of all the subwatershed, land cover, soil,
and slope combinations were obtained using a simple func-
tion (“combine”) of common geographic information sys-

= Soil 1 (48 ha), = Soil 2 (352 ha), and = Reapportioned land after application of threshold

Original land cover and soil combinations 1. Application of land cover threshold 2. Application of soil threshold

1. Application of Land Cover Threshold (20%) 2. Application of Soil Threshold (10%)

Percentage Area after Land Percentage
Land Area of Sub- Qualifies Result Cover Threshold of Land Qualifies Result
Cover (ha) Watershed as HRU? (ha) Soil (ha) Cover as HRU? (ha)
Soil 1 (C-1) 19.5 8.0% No 0
Cropland 200 50% Yes 244
Soil 2 (C-2) 224.5 92.0% Yes 244.0
Soil 1 (F-1) 19.5 12.5% Yes 19.5
Forest 128 32% Yes 156
Soil 2 (F-2) 136.5 87.5% Yes 136.5
Urban 72 18% No 0 Urban land reapportioned to cropland and forest

Figure 2. Application of a 20%-10% (land cover and soil) threshold to a hypothetical subwatershed with three land cover types (cropland,
urban, and forest) and two soil types resulting in six land cover/soil combinations (C-1, C-2, F-1, F-2, U-1, and U-2). After application of
thresholds, 88 ha (22% of the subwatershed) is no longer directly represented in the simulation.

58(2): 367-378 369


Figure 3. Subwatersheds of St. Joseph watershed and county lines.
tem (GIS) software such as ArcMap using classified sub-
watershed, land cover, soil, and slope layers. The repro-
duced algorithm was validated by comparing the numbers
of HRUs provided by ArcSWAT and the spreadsheet with
several thresholds. ArcSWAT (ver. 2012.10_1.10, released
30 July 2013) gives a map of defined HRUs for a study
watershed after all the thresholds are applied to the overlaid
layers. The spreadsheet was created to replicate all the
HRU definition processes of ArcSWAT so as to explicitly
examine and better understand the processes. Six thresholds
for land cover (0% to 25%) and six for soil (0% to 25%) for
a total of 36 combinations of thresholds were investigated.
The subwatershed boundaries of the study watershed were
kept constant, and the slope threshold was not considered
for brevity of the study.
ENTROPY OF HRUS WITH DIFFERENT THRESHOLDS
The amount of information contained in HRU maps de-
fined with different thresholds was quantified using entropy
theory to investigate how much information was lost by
applying non-zero thresholds, as well as the relationship
between the amount of information contained in HRUs and
the model predictions. The entropy is computed using
equation 2:
k
H ( p1 , p2 ,…, pk ) = − pi log2 pi
i =1
where H is entropy (bits), i is the index of classes, k is the
number of classes, and p is the probability, i.e., the relative
frequency of the class, which is equal to 1/n, where n is a
count or frequency for each class, or equal to Area-
370
Class/AreaAll, where AreaClass is the area of a class, and Are-
aAll is the total area of all classes.
The entropy equation was applied to HRU maps defined
with different thresholds. Each combination (or class) of
land cover, soil, and subwatershed has a frequency of 1
when the combination exists in the HRUs, and it has zero
frequency otherwise. In the HRUs defined with the zero
threshold, for instance, every combination has a frequency
of 1 and the corresponding probability is 1/k, where k is the
number of all the classes, combinations, or HRUs (23,089
in this study), which provides the maximum entropy that
HRUs can have. When a non-zero threshold is applied,
only some of the combinations have a frequency of 1, and
the probability of one qualified combination will be 1/n,
where n is the number of all the qualified combinations
(e.g., 1,010 for the 5%-5% land cover-soil thresholds in the
case of the St. Joseph watershed, fig. 4). Thus, entropy of
HRUs decreases with an increase in land cover and soil
thresholds. When a probability is calculated based on areas
of classes, a frequency is replaced with an area or the num-
ber of cells for each class in equation 2.
SENSITIVITY OF SWAT MODELING OUTPUTS
TO HRU DEFINITION
Hydrology and water quality processes were modeled
with watershed representations made by applying four
HRU thresholds (0%-0%, 5%-5%, 10%-10%, and 25%-
25%). Five subwatersheds located along the stream main
stem were selected to show the effects of the HRU thresh-
olds at the subwatershed outlets (using the “output.sub”
file), as well as the cumulative effect downstream (using
the “output.rch” file). Differences in response to changes in
HRU thresholds among the five subwatersheds were inves-
tigated and related to subwatershed characteristics. Deter-
mining how the changes in watershed-level outputs accu-
mulate as water moves downstream in the watershed is
important since outputs are often only examined at the wa-
tershed outlet.
RESULTS
The number and area of the HRUs decreased sharply
with an increase in land cover-soil thresholds (fig. 4). For
instance, thresholds of 5%-5% resulted in only 50% of the
area being in an HRU, and only 4.4% of the maximum
number of HRUs, while thresholds of 5%-10%, which is
one of the threshold combinations commonly used in
SWAT modeling (e.g., Larose et al., 2007; Meng et al.,
2010; Srinivasan et al., 2010; EPA, 2013), resulted in
HRUs covering only 38% of the watershed. Entropy repre-
sents the number of bits required to contain information
(eq. 2). For example, the entropy of 9.98 calculated for the
threshold of 5%-5% can be interpreted in a way that 29.9801
(2) bits (29.9801 = 1,010) are required to represent the heteroge-
neity (1,010 unique combinations of land covers, soils, and
subwatersheds) contained in the HRUs defined with the
threshold.
The HRU numbers and areas were more sensitive to the
soil threshold than the land cover threshold, and the number
TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASABE
 Percent of watershed area included in an HRU
Percent of the numbers of defined HRUs to the total
100% Percent of entropy of defined HRUs to the total

80%
Percent of HRU Areas and Numbers

60%

40%

20%

0%

Soil 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25

Land Cover 0 5 10 15 20 25

Soil and Land Cover Thresholds (%)

Figure 4. Relationship between threshold levels, numbers and areas of HRUs, and entropy, expressed as percentages.

Table 1. Changes in areas and proportions of land use and land cover (LULC) classes included in HRUs according to the threshold settings.
HRU Threshold
0%-0% 5%-5% 10%-10% 15%-15% 20%-20% 25%-25%
LULC Area Area Area Area Area Area Area Area Area Area Area Area
(SWAT Code) (km2) (%) (km2) (%) (km2) (%) (km2) (%) (km2) (%) (km2) (%)
ALFA 52 1.8 18 1.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
CORN 395 14.1 250 16.4 162 17.6 75 12.5 10 2.6 3 1.3
FRSD 331 11.8 177 11.7 83 9.0 24 4.1 2 0.6 2 0.9
FRSE 2 0.1 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
HAY 8 0.3 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
OATS 2 0.1 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
PAST 710 25.3 416 27.4 296 32.0 208 34.8 155 42.1 103 41.8
RNGB 4 0.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
RNGE 36 1.3 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
SOYB 654 23.3 435 28.6 314 34.0 245 41.0 177 48.1 119 48.4
URHD 9 0.3 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
URLD 171 6.1 78 5.1 22 2.4 21 3.5 11 3.1 6 2.4
URMD 17 0.6 5 0.3 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
URML 83 3.0 28 1.8 17 1.9 17 2.9 13 3.4 13 5.1
WATR 38 1.3 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
WETF 210 7.5 87 5.7 28 3.0 8 1.3 0 0.0 0 0.0
WETN 4 0.2 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
WPAS 2 0.1 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
WWHT 78 2.8 25 1.7 1 0.1 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0.0
Sum 2,809 100.0 1,519 100.0 924 100.0 598 100.0 369 100.0 246 100.0
% to 0%-0% 100.0 - 54.1 - 32.9 - 21.3 - 13.1 - 8.8 -

of HRUs was more responsive to the thresholds than was
the area (fig. 4). HRU thresholds also caused substantial
changes in the watershed land use composition (table 1).
Area proportions of pasture (PAST) and soybean (SOYB)
that are dominant land covers increased with an increase in
thresholds, while an opposite trend was observed in the
case of forest (FRSD and WETF). Area proportions of corn
(CORN) and urban (URLD and URML) areas fluctuated as
thresholds changed.

58(2): 367-378 371

 0%
Land
Cover
Threshold

5%
Land
Cover
Threshold

10%
Land
Cover
Threshold

0% Soil 5% Soil 10% Soil

Threshold Threshold Threshold

Figure 5. Variations in spatial distributions of HRUs according to threshold levels.

The spatial distributions of the defined HRUs with se-
lected thresholds, depicted in figure 5, show that the HRU
distributions are uneven over a watershed, and the spatial
heterogeneity increases as the threshold increases. These
numbers vary among the subwatersheds as well. For the
same threshold setting (5%-5%), the numbers vary from
15% to 49% and areas from 32% to 94% by subwatersheds
depending on landscapes and the size of soil polygons. Fig-
ure 5 also shows that the density of the HRU distributions
changes abruptly over county boundaries due to the differ-
ent sizes of SSURGO soil polygons. Soils were mapped at
different times by different teams; as a result, the SSURGO
soil polygon size varies among counties. This spatial pat-
tern becomes clearer in figure 6, which shows the spatial
distribution of frequency of defined HRUs with the 36 dif-
ferent thresholds. The frequency of inclusion in an HRU is

372 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASABE


Figure 6. Frequency of inclusion in an HRU out of 36 threshold levels.
highest in DeKalb County, Indiana, where the SSURGO
soil mapping units are larger. In this county, three major
soils are mapped as occupying 64% (605 km2) of the coun-
ty area (942 km2), leading to fewer but larger land cover-
soil combinations, which are more likely to be classified as
HRUs. Soil polygons are smaller in the counties of Hills-
dale (Michigan) and Williams (Ohio), and many combina-
tions are not included as HRUs. In addition, fewer areas
close to the stream networks are included as HRUs because
of relatively smaller soil polygons in the vicinity of the
streams.
Elimination of certain areas of the watershed may be a
concern if the modeling goals include determining the ef-
fect of agricultural practices at known locations, because
only practices located within an HRU can be modeled. In
the St. Joseph watershed, locations of more than 5,000 con-
servation practices were known, but after application of the
5%-10%-0% threshold, only 31.7% were located in an
HRU. Using thresholds of 0%-0%-0% solves the problem;
however, if the resulting number of HRUs becomes un-
manageable, modelers may want to explore combining soil
types with similar properties of interest before defining
HRUs. Current digital soil mapping research exploring the
development of soil property maps through techniques such
as fuzzy logic (e.g., Malone et al., 2013; Nauman et al.,
2012) should facilitate such efforts.
The four thresholds applied to the five subwatersheds
resulted in very different land use configurations and some
different model outputs (fig. 7). Water yield was not sensi-
tive to HRU thresholds in any subwatershed, but sediment
and nutrient loads were, implying that water quality simula-
tion is more sensitive to watershed landscape representation
58(2): 367-378
than is hydrologic simulation. However, the direction of
changes varied among subwatersheds, since each subwater-
shed had different compositions of land covers, soils, and
slopes, and the effects of the reapportioning processes of
HRU definition depend on spatial distributions of the land-
scape.
In subwatershed 1, as thresholds increased, the propor-
tion of corn and soybean areas became larger, and conse-
quently nutrient loads increased. Sediment loads did not
increase consistently and in fact decreased in some subwa-
tersheds. The increase in nutrient loads was expected, but
the decrease in sediment loads was surprising, and there-
fore the characteristics of HRUs defined with the various
thresholds were investigated. Subwatershed 1 is a headwa-
ter catchment, which is relatively steep and a main source
area of sediment loads in the St. Joseph watershed. The
area-weighted average slope for corn and soybean HRUs
decreased consistently from 0.0187 for the 0%-0% thresh-
olds, to 0.0147 for 10%-10%, to 0.0110 for 25%-25%. The
MUSLE topographic factor (L and S factors) of corn and
soybean HRUs decreased from 0.29 for the 0%-0% thresh-
olds, to 0.22 for 10%-10%, to 0.17 for 25%-25%. These
decreases explain the decrease in sediment loads, demon-
strating that selection of HRU thresholds can affect the
composition of watershed slopes as well as land uses and
soils and thus largely influence sediment simulation of
SWAT through the MUSLE topographic factors.
In subwatershed 2, the sediment and nutrient loads were
lowest for thresholds of 0%-0% and 25%-25% and higher
at the intermediate thresholds when the percentage of land
in corn and soybeans was higher. At the 25%-25% thresh-
olds, a pasture HRU was left as the only land use covering
the subwatershed, resulting in reduced sediment and nutri-
ent loads.
In subwatershed 4, when thresholds increase, sediment
loads decrease, which was also found in subwatersheds 1
and 3. However, area-weighted average slope (0.0240) and
topographic factor (0.35) of HRUs defined with the thresh-
olds of 25%-25% were greater than those (0.0120 to 0.0152
for slopes and 0.18 to 0.23 for topographic factors) of the
other thresholds. Investigation of the HRU features showed
that the MUSLE C factor (0.003) of the only HRU (pas-
ture) for the subwatershed was much smaller than those
(0.200 for corn and soybeans) of HRUs defined with the
other thresholds. Thus, the decrease in the sediment load
could be directly attributed to change in land use composi-
tion.
Subwatershed 5 is substantially urban, and sediment and
nutrient loads were relatively small compared to those of
the other subwatersheds. As thresholds increased, propor-
tions of urban land uses including URLD and URML in-
creased (table 2), which might have resulted in an increase
in sediment and nutrient loads since these loads for urban
land uses are a function of impervious areas in SWAT
(Neitsch et al., 2011). However, sediment and TP loads
decreased as the thresholds increased, which was not com-
pletely explained with variations in the slope and MUSLE
topographic factors. The empirical equation used in SWAT
to calculate sediment and nutrient loads in urban areas
(eq. 3) calculates greater total loads when urban areas are
373
 CORN SOYB PAST FRSD URML URLD WETF ALFA
100%

Percentage Area
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%

Entropy (bits)
10
Water Yield

300
(mm)

150 5

0 0

Entropy (bits)
10
Load (Mg/ha)
Sediment

6
5
3
0 0

Entropy (bits)
40 10
TN Load
(Kg/ha)

20 5

0 0
9

Entropy (bits)
10
6
TP Load
(Kg/ha)

5
3
0 0
10-10
25-25

10-10
25-25

10-10
25-25

10-10
25-25

10-10
25-25
0-0
5-5

0-0
5-5

0-0
5-5

0-0
5-5

0-0
5-5

Threshold

Subwatershed 1 2 3 4 5
Figure 7. Subwatershed-level outputs (average annual yield and loads from output.sub, denoted as gray bars) simulated based on HRUs defined
with different thresholds, and entropy of the HRUs (denoted as black circles). URML = medium/low density residential, URLD = low density
residential, WETF = wetland forest, SOYB = soybean, PAST = pasture, FRSD = deciduous forest, CORN = corn, and ALFA = alfalfa.

fragmented into multiple HRUs, rather than aggregated into
a single urban HRU in a subwatershed (Neitsch et al., 2011,
pp. 385-386):
Y = β0 Rday / 25.4 × ( DA ⋅ imptot / 2.59 ) 2
β1
 ( ) β
(3)
× ( imptot ⋅100 + 1) 3 × β4  ÷ 2.205
β was affected by many other hydrologic factors, including
where Y is the total constituent load (kg), Rday is precipita-
tion on a given day (mm), DA is the HRU drainage area
(km2), imptot is the fraction of the total impervious area, and
β0 to β4 are regression coefficients. The reduced loads for
greater HRU (drainage area) size resulted from the fact that
β2, the exponent of the HRU drainage area expression, is
less than 1 for areas with annual precipitation between 508
and 1016 mm (Neitsch et al., 2011). Therefore, the de-
crease in number of urban HRUs in subwatershed 5 from
91 at thresholds of 0%-0% to 3 at thresholds of 25%-25%
is likely one reason for the decrease in sediment and TP
loads. On the other hand, variation in TN of subwatershed 5
subsurface flow.
To investigate how the threshold effects propagated
downstream, watershed-level SWAT outputs (from out-
put.rch) representing cumulative responses of hydrologic
and pollutant transport processes from upstream areas were
simulated with the HRU thresholds and compared to each
other (fig. 8). These results complement the subwatershed

374 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASABE

Table 2. Changes in proportional area (%) of land use and land cover tersheds 1 and 2 increased as thresholds increased, while
(LULC) classes included in HRUs according to threshold settings for
for subwatersheds 3, 4, and 5, proportions of the cumula-
the selected subwatersheds.
LULC Class and Subwatershed tive corn and soybean areas increased until thresholds of
HRU Thresholds 1 2 3 4 5 10%-10% and then decreased (table 3). TN followed the
Alfalfa (ALFA) same pattern as land use, indicating that TN load simulation
0%-0% 5.3 1.0 0.4 0.5 0.3 of SWAT is sensitive to land use composition (fig. 8).
5%-5% 7.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
10%-10% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
However, TP loads consistently increased downstream,
25%-25% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 suggesting that TP loads are more correlated with soybean
Corn (CORN) areas in SWAT modeling (fig. 8 and table 3). Because the
0%-0% 16.8 14.1 17.2 8.7 1.9 landscape features and discharges are similar, the loads are
5%-5% 18.0 22.9 20.3 10.0 0.0
mainly controlled by management practices, such as ferti-
10%-10% 27.8 21.1 12.0 0.0 0.0
25%-25% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 lizer applications, and are therefore greatly affected by
Deciduous forest (FRSD) HRU thresholds that change crop areas.
0%-0% 12.1 4.8 8.2 16.9 12.0
5%-5% 10.8 0.0 8.8 15.2 13.6
10%-10% 4.7 0.0 0.0 9.0 14.9
25%-25% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 DISCUSSION
Pasture (PAST) Use of entropy provided a direct means of presenting the
0%-0% 10.7 28.9 23.2 39.7 14.8
5%-5% 10.4 29.0 16.6 45.7 17.5
information content of HRU maps in the unit of infor-
10%-10% 18.7 32.8 17.8 69.5 19.2 mation (bits). Other indirect indices of the amount of in-
25%-25% 0.0 100.0 0.0 100.0 0.0 formation contained in HRU maps, such as the numbers
Soybean (SOYB) and areas of HRUs, could be used (e.g., fig. 4). However,
0%-0% 25.8 24.4 26.1 17.4 4.7 these SWAT-specific units are not applicable to other mod-
5%-5% 36.0 33.9 34.0 21.0 0.0
10%-10% 40.7 36.7 70.3 21.5 0.0 els that use different watershed discretization methods such
25%-25% 100.0 0.0 100.0 0.0 0.0 as grid (e.g., AGNPS, CASD2D, Vflow, etc.), subwater-
Wetland forest (WETF) shed-based (HEC-HMS), and lumped (HSPF). The entropy
0%-0% 11.1 10.7 4.7 1.2 0.6 concept can also be applied to model outputs and observa-
5%-5% 10.0 14.2 0.0 0.0 0.0
10%-10% 8.1 9.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 tions in the form of time-series to quantify the information
25%-25% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 content of the outputs. Comparing the amount of infor-
Low density residential (URLD) mation contained in the input data, model outputs, and ob-
0%-0% 3.8 3.8 6.8 7.5 25.1 servations could provide insight into how information
5%-5% 0.0 0.0 8.6 8.1 29.0
10%-10% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 31.8
transfers through the simulation processes of models.
25%-25% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 31.8 This study shows that HRU numbers and areas are con-
Medium/low density residential (URML) sistently more sensitive to soil thresholds than land cover
0%-0% 2.2 3.1 3.0 1.8 25.8 thresholds. This is due in part to the fact that the land cover
5%-5% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 31.9
10%-10% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 34.2
threshold is applied first. The land cover percentages are
25%-25% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 68.2 calculated with respect to the subwatershed, while the soil
percentages are calculated with respect to the land cover
results by suggesting how the thresholds affect results at (fig. 1). A second reason is that that U.S. soil data (i.e.,
the watershed outlet, which is often the location where val- SSURGO) has many more categories than commonly used
idation data are usually available and outputs are compared land use datasets (e.g., NLCD). For example, the St. Joseph
to parameters of interest such as water quality standards. As watershed includes 455 different soil types with an average
expected, streamflow and pollutant loads increased in the area of only 617 ha, but only 40 land use and land cover
downstream direction from subwatershed 1 (headwater) to categories with an average area of more than 7000 ha each.
subwatershed 5 (farthest downstream). Small differences in In the past, when SWAT modelers typically used STATS-
water yields simulated with different thresholds were found GO soils data with its large polygons, the effect of soil pol-
at the subwatershed level (especially for subwatershed 5, ygon size and thresholds was less likely to be a concern,
the most downstream subwatershed, fig. 6) but not at the although the soil data may have been less representative of
watershed outlet. Channel routing averaged the signals in the watershed because STATSGO soil map units were not
hydrographs from individual subwatersheds. aggregated for the purpose of watershed modeling. Other
Selection of HRU thresholds had more effect on annual ways to aggregate soil data could be considered for more
average sediment and nutrient loads than daily streamflow, efficient SWAT simulations, depending on the modeling
consistent with the subwatershed-level outputs. TP in- goal. For example, if the modeling goal focuses only on
creased as thresholds increased, but threshold effects on streamflow, soils could be aggregated by the major proper-
sediment and TN loads varied. The 5%-5% thresholds re- ties affecting hydrology, including hydrologic soil group,
sulted in the largest sediment load. Watershed-level TN hydraulic conductivity, and soil depth. If water quality sim-
loads were highly correlated with proportions of corn and ulation is a modeling objective, aggregation of soil types
soybean areas accumulated from the subwatershed outlets would need to consider other influential soil properties,
to the most upstream subwatershed (table 3). Proportions of such as soil texture and organic matter content.
corn and soybean areas located in areas upstream of subwa-

58(2): 367-378 375

 30

Entropy (bits)
15

Daily Stream
Flow (cms)
15 7.5

0 0
Load (103 Mg)

3,000

Entropy (bits)
15
Sediment

1,500 7.5

0 0

15

Entropy (bits)
8,000
TN Load
(103 Kg)

4,000 7.5

0 0

15

Entropy (bits)
1,400
7.5
TP Load
(103 Kg)

700

0 0
10-10
25-25

10-10
25-25

10-10
25-25

10-10
25-25

10-10
25-25
0-0
5-5

0-0
5-5

0-0
5-5

0-0
5-5

0-0
5-5
Threshold

Subwatershed 1 2 3 4 5
Figure 8. Watershed-level outputs (from output.rch, denoted as gray bars) simulated based on HRUs defined with different thresholds and
entropy of the HRUs (denoted as black circles).

Table 3. Accumulated percentage areas of corn and soybean for the selected subwatersheds and their correlation to TP and TN loads (from
watershed-level output, output.rch) simulated for the subwatershed outlets.
HRU Thresholds Correlation Coefficient
Subwatershed Crop 0%-0% 5%-5% 10%-10% 25%-25% With TP With TN
Corn 16.8 18.0 27.8 0.0 - -
1 Soybean 25.8 36.0 40.7 100.0 0.97 -
Corn and soybean 42.6 54.0 68.5 100.0 - 0.92
Corn 15.0 19.0 23.9 0.0 - -
2 Soybean 23.0 32.2 37.9 80.6 0.98 -
Corn and soybean 38.0 51.2 61.9 80.6 - 0.96
Corn 14.1 17.5 20.8 0.0 - -
3 Soybean 22.9 30.5 39.5 49.3 0.91 -
Corn and soybean 37.0 48.0 60.4 49.3 - 0.85
Corn 13.7 16.5 17.7 0.0 - -
4 Soybean 23.7 30.5 37.8 51.6 0.87 -
Corn and soybean 37.5 47.1 55.6 51.6 - 0.91
Corn 14.1 16.4 17.6 1.3 - -
5 Soybean 23.3 28.6 34.0 48.4 0.85 -
Corn and soybean 37.3 45.1 51.5 49.7 - 0.91

Water yield and streamflow outputs were much less sen-
sitive to HRU thresholds in this watershed than were sedi-
ment and nutrient loads (figs. 7 and 8). This lower sensitivi-
ty may be due in part to the characteristics of this water-
shed, which mainly consists of agricultural land covers
such as row crops and pasture (table 1) that have similar
curve numbers and soils of hydrologic soil groups C and D,
where differences between curve numbers of land covers
are relatively small. However, we believe the effect would
be similar in other watersheds because the long-term
streamflow of a watershed is mainly controlled by soil
moisture and groundwater flow, which are determined by
climate and geological features rather than by a few storm
events driving soil erosion and nutrient loading to a water-
body.
Based on these findings, the following recommendations
may help modelers make decisions about thresholds to use
when setting up the model:

376 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASABE

 1. Larger thresholds can be used if water quality is not a
focus of the study because streamflow is generally
less sensitive to thresholds than are nutrients or sedi-
ment.
2. Relatively smaller thresholds should be used when
model results are desired at a finer resolution than the
watershed outlet, such as the subwatershed outlet or
HRU. Model outputs at the subwatershed outlet are
more sensitive to thresholds than at the watershed
outlet.
3. If the modeling goal includes incorporating location
information, such as BMP locations, modelers should
use the lowest thresholds possible. Defining HRUs
with thresholds of 0%-0%-0% is the most certain
way to preserve areas where all BMPs are located, so
that their effect can be evaluated in the modeling
study. If computing resource limitations make the re-
sulting number of HRUs unmanageable, other ways
to reduce HRU numbers could be explored, such as
combining soil types.
4. If soil polygons are not evenly sized across the water-
shed (for example, at U.S. county boundaries or in
areas close to streams), there is a potential for bias
when higher soil thresholds are used, since areas with
smaller soil polygons (higher resolution) are less like-
ly to meet the thresholds. This means that counties
with larger soil polygons on average will have greater
area included in HRUs, while complex areas, such as
those near a stream, where soil polygons are general-
ly smaller will have less area included in HRUs.
Careful inspection of the soil data could help model-
ers determine whether this potential for bias should
influence their choice of threshold.
5. Larger land cover thresholds tend to eliminate small
land use categories, so combining similar categories
may be beneficial before applying thresholds. For ex-
ample, various urban categories such as low and me-
dium density residential might be combined if the
modeling goal does not clearly require separation.
This would also reduce the fragmentation of HRUs,
which affects sediment prediction as discussed above.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
This study examined the impact of 36 thresholds on the
number, area, and entropy of HRUs and the resulting wa-
tershed representation and simulated hydrology and water
quality in an 8-digit HUC watershed. Applying commonly
used thresholds in defining HRUs led to considerable loss
of information about the watershed landscape. The simpli-
fication of the watershed landscape using HRUs and
thresholds increases the computational efficiency of SWAT
modeling by reducing the number of HRUs but emphasizes
larger soil types on smaller land covers once the land co-
vers meet the threshold, resulting in less representative wa-
tershed characteristics. Selection of non-zero thresholds
changed not only the land use composition but also the
average slopes used in subwatershed simulation. Sediment
and nutrient load simulations by SWAT were strongly re-
58(2): 367-378
sponsive to HRU thresholds, while water yield and stream-
flow were less affected. Sediment load was closely associ-
ated with slopes, while nutrient loads were most closely
related with land uses, particularly crop areas, in SWAT.
The selection of thresholds in the HRU process has a strong
effect on the land uses and soils that are used in the simula-
tion and on the resulting water quality simulations. These
results can help modelers improve their understanding of
the HRU strategy for simplifying watershed representation
while maintaining major landscape features and make deci-
sions in the HRU delineation process to minimize the
chance of biased simulations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Funding for this study was provided by the U.S. Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency under the Great Lakes Resto-
ration Initiative (Project No. GL-00E00577-0) and the U.S.
Department of Energy (Award No. DE-EE0004396). We
sincerely appreciate the constructive comments provided by
four anonymous reviewers and Dr. Clair Baffaut, Associate
Editor, to improve the quality of the manuscript.
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