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Effective watershed management and protection of water resources from non-point source pollution require identification, prioritization, and targeting of pollutant source areas. Process-based hydrology and water quality models are powerful heuristic tools for land and water resources managers. However, because of their complexity, such models are often under-utilized as management prioritization and planning tools. In this paper, we present a prioritization, interactive visualization, and analysis tool (Pi-VAT) that is programmed to synthesize multi-scenario, multi-watershed outputs from process-based geospatial models. We demonstrate the utility of Pi VAT to examine simulated hydrologic, sediment, and water quality response at the hillslope/hydrologic response unit (HRU) scale. We apply Pi-VAT to output from multiple watersheds and for multiple management scenarios and treatments from two geospatial models for watershed management: Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) and Soil & Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). Pi-VAT was developed using the Shiny web application framework for the R programming language. In a matter of minutes, Pi-VAT can synthesize overwhelming amounts of output from process-based models into information useful for land and water resources managers. We illustrate the use of Pi-VAT to interactively identify, quantify, and visualize areas that are most susceptible to disturbance under different scenarios and provide a synthesis approach based on land use, soil type, and slope steepness. This approach guides land and water resources managers in prioritizing the areas of the watershed that provide the maximum reduction in pollutant loads while treating the least amount of area. Pi-VAT provides a flexible reactive platform for the development of decision support tools based on process-based models intended for watershed management and research applications. AFRI program [1009827]; USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Published version This work was supported by the AFRI program [grant no201667020-25320/project accession no. 1009827] from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Public domain – authored by a U.S. government employee

Summary Forest managers need methods to evaluate the impacts of management at the watershed scale. The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) has the ability to model disturbed forested hillslopes, but has difficulty addressing some of the critical processes that are important at a watershed scale, including baseflow and water yield. In order to apply WEPP to forested watersheds, we developed and assessed new approaches for simulating streamflow and sediment transport from large watersheds using WEPP. We created specific algorithms to spatially distribute soil, climate, and management input files for all the subwatersheds within the basin. The model enhancements were tested on five geologically and climatically diverse watersheds in the Lake Tahoe basin, USA. The model was run with minimal calibration to assess WEPP’s ability as a physically-based model to predict streamflow and sediment delivery. The performance of the model was examined against 17 years of observed snow water equivalent depth, streamflow, and sediment load data. Only region-wide baseflow recession parameters related to the geology of the basin were calibrated with observed streamflow data. Close agreement between simulated and observed snow water equivalent, streamflow, and the distribution of fine ( 20 μm) sediments was achieved at each of the major watersheds located in the high-precipitation regions of the basin. Sediment load was adequately simulated in the drier watersheds; however, annual streamflow was overestimated. With the exception of the drier eastern region, the model demonstrated no loss in accuracy when applied without calibration to multiple watersheds across Lake Tahoe basin demonstrating the utility of the model as a management tool in gauged and ungauged basins.