Planning and assessment in land and water resource management are evolving from simple, local-scale problems toward complex, spatially explicit regional issues. Such problems have to be addressed with distributed models that can compute runoff and erosion at different spatial and temporal scales. The extensive data requirements and the difficult task of building input parameter files, however, have long represented an obstacle to the timely and cost-effective use of such complex models by resource managers (Semmens, et al., 2004).
Ultimately, management of surface water that integrates groundwater recharge must focus on the primary source of water, precipitation. Recharge through infiltration is a very complex process to model. It involves processing rainfall, topography, soils, vegetation, climate, and land use. As development and urbanization grow, storm water management should provide a mechanism and a location to infiltrate water in order to control runoff volume increases. Urbanization typically increases the percent of impervious area. This development increases storm water runoff rates and volumes while decreasing infiltration. Management approaches, such as storm water infiltration basins, are opportunities to maintain and sometimes increase infiltration in developed areas (Donavon et al., 2000).