Enhancing Reproducibility in Soil Water Balance Environmental Studies: The WaterpyBal Framework

This research introduces WaterpyBal, a dynamic tool tailored for spatiotemporal modeling of water balance, emphasizing diffuse precipitation and recharge dynamics. WaterpyBal demonstrates adaptability through its incorporation of diverse input datasets and flexible temporal intervals for model simulations. The tool seamlessly integrates critical stages of water balance assessment, encompassing data interpolation, evapotranspiration, and infiltration computations, accounting for soil attributes and urban hydrological intricacies. It delivers comprehensive water budget parameters, including recharge, deficit, and runoff, accompanied by the generation of informative maps, datasheets, and raster archives. WaterpyBal modular architecture establishes a versatile foundation, positioning it as an open-source Python library exclusively dedicated to Soil Water Balance computations. Supporting temporal variations at hourly, daily, and monthly scales, WaterpyBal accommodates a spectrum of data formats, consolidating disparate stages of SWB calculations into an integrated library. Leveraging the NetCDF data format, widely recognized in scientific toolsets, WaterpyBal streamlines the workflow from spatial interpolation to result visualization, enhancing its applicability across diverse environmental investigations. User engagement is facilitated through the WaterpyBal Studio, an intuitive graphical interface that guides users through each stage of the modelling process. WaterpyBal Studio has a user-centric design and is efficient in supporting sustainable groundwater management initiatives. In summary, WaterpyBal and WaterpyBal Studio emerge as an inclusive solution for water balance modelling, embodying an integrated approach and adhering to the principles of open-source methodologies in environmental research.