A Watershed-Oriented Mesh Generator for Physically Based Hydrological Models

PDE-based hydrologic models demand extensive preprocessing, which can create a bottleneck and slow down the model setup process. Mesh generation typically lacks integration with hydrological features like river networks. To address this, we present GHOST Mesh (GMesh), an automated, watershed-oriented mesh generator built within the Watershed Modeling Framework (WMF). While primarily designed for the GHOST hydrological model, GMesh’s functionalities can be adapted for other models. GMesh enables rapid mesh generation in Python by incorporating Digital Elevation Models (DEM), flow direction maps, network topology, and online services. The software creates Voronoi polygons that maintain connectivity between river segments and surrounding hillslopes, ensuring accurate surface-subsurface interaction representation. Key features include customizable mesh generation and variable refinement to target specific watershed areas. We applied GMesh to Iowa’s Bear Creek watershed, generating meshes from 10,000 to 30,000 elements and analyzing their effects on simulated stream flows. Results show higher mesh resolutions enhance peak flow predictions and reduce response time discrepancies, while local refinements improve model performance with minimal additional computation. GMesh’s open-source nature streamlines mesh generation, offering researchers an efficient solution for hydrological analysis and model configuration testing.