Extended Hydrofabric: A standardized geospatial database for reproducible water management modeling in the United States

The large-scale application of Water Management Models (WMMs) is limited by fragmented, non-standardized water management data, and a lack of integration with hydrologic models. To address this gap, we developed automated, reproducible workflows that extend the United States’ reference hydrofabric to explicitly include water management infrastructure such as reservoirs and diversion points while populating a relational database containing operational and administrative records. Piloted across the entire Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB), this work integrates 1,318 diversions and 37 major reservoirs using persistent identifiers to ensure interoperability with existing national hydrologic models including the National Hydrologic Model and the National Water Model. The resulting contributions are, first, a basin-scale Extended Hydrofabric data product for the UCRB, directly usable for constructing WMMs and coupling with hydrologic models, and second, designs and workflows that enable generation of Extended Hydrofabric for other managed basins and provide a foundation for future conterminous United States-scale applications.