Integrative Hydrology

Scope:

Scientific issues related to a number of water problems of national and international importance often involve the combined or integrated effects of groundwater hydrology, surface-water hydrology, soil physics and biochemistry, atmospheric dynamics, and climate.  For example, global change presents the prospect of altered seasonal precipitation amount and style, with corresponding changes in surface water and groundwater response.  Predicting fresh water supply in the face of altered climate regimes requires approaches that consider details of coupling and interaction between the climate, plant, vadose zone, surface water, and groundwater systems.  This Research Area aims to nurture and promote integration between disciplines to solve large and complex problems broadly related to water resources.

ESD Activities:

The current emphasis of the Integrative Hydrology Research Area is in two areas: 

The first is developing an understanding of integrated processes and developing ways of modeling combined effects.  Because these research fields have different characteristic temporal and spatial scales, development of integrated models presents significant scientific challenges.  Furthermore, the different fields use quite different mathematical approaches and modeling methods.  This has necessitated close communication and cooperation among researchers from different backgrounds.  An example of an integrative model is a recent project to develop a physically-based atmosphere-surface-water-groundwater system model, with feedbacks and cross-boundary fluxes, at coarse resolution for the California Central Valley, and at fine resolution, for the Merced River basin and the Grasslands Ecological Complex.  This model will be applied to study a variety of climate and land-use scenarios, including the impact of population increase and climate change in California.

The second focus is on interface processes.  These occur, for example, between groundwater and the vadose-root zone, vadose zone and surface water, land surface and the atmosphere.  Advanced understanding and modeling of interface processes for different scenarios of water use and climate change are needed for the development of an integrated model.  An example is the interaction between gas seepage from the ground and air currents at the land surface relevant to geologic CO2 sequestration risk assessment and monitoring.  Such interaction will determine the degree of dispersion of the seeping gas.  A second example is the competition between land surface evapotranspiration, root zone absorption of water, vadose zone flow, and groundwater-level changes due to various natural or man-made conditions.  Research into interface processes would include laboratory investigations, modeling studies, as well as field observations.

Contact:

Chin-Fu Tsang
ph: 510.486.5782
email: cftsang@lbl.gov