This meta-model describes surface and subsurface water as physical objects and as regimes: rivers, lakes, seas, wetlands and aquifers, the catchments that feed them, the flows and levels they carry through the year, and the measured quality of the water itself. It is its own model because a water body is a connected, moving system whose identity survives changes of level and course, and because the network topology of upstream and downstream relations is the basis for almost every other water question. Supply chains and treatment are described in F4, and abstraction rights are granted elsewhere; here the subject is the water and its behaviour.
What water bodies exist, where they are and how they connect
waterFeature`: rivers, lakes, seas, wetlands and springs as identified features · `catchment`: drainage areas and their nesting · `networkTopology`: upstream and downstream connectivity between features and nodes · `aquifer`: subsurface water bodies, their extent and confinement
How much water moves, when, and how variable it is
flowAndLevel`: discharge, stage, tide and groundwater level observations · `waterBalance`: inflow, outflow, storage, recharge and abstraction returns over a period · `extremeStatistics`: flood and low-flow frequency, return periods and seasonality
What the water contains and what state that implies
physicoChemical`: sampled determinands, concentrations and methods · `biologicalStatus`: indicator communities and classified ecological status
Catalogue-native findings must describe the information grouped by each layer. This legacy version does not declare them separately.
Questions, artifact requirements and serial naming rules are required by Vercy vNext; they remain unassigned in this reference version.
Format-independent core. Concrete artifact formats and naming prefixes are not declared in this legacy version.
CRUD procedures and interface bindings are not declared in this legacy version.
An ecology commons steward keeps the hydrological register: it delineates bodies and catchments, operates or accredits monitoring, and publishes regimes and status classifications, without holding any claim over the water itself. Access to restricted station feeds, sensitive sampling locations or pre-validation data is granted by the steward through S2 access contracts, and reads are logged in S4.