2012 NGWA Ground Water Summit: Innovate and Integrate

New Approaches Addressing Challenges

Tuesday, May 8, 2012: 1:10 p.m.
Terrace Room A-C (Hyatt Regency Orange County)
Zhongbo Yu, PE, PG, University of Las Vegas;

Hydrologists have begun to focus on science questions of increased complexity and scope in surface and ground water hydrology. One important example is hydrologic changes in response to the climatic variability. These changes at global, national or regional scales might directly include alterations to ecological systems, the patterns of droughts and floods, and the availability of ground water. A focal point of our research has been the integrated assessment of natural and human-induced climate impacts on human activities at regional scales. These studies have relied on the development and application of a model, coupling both climate and hydrologic systems. It is designed specifically for interactive climate-hydrologic simulations to examine explicit responses of rivers, lakes, wetlands and water tables across various scales. The presentation will include applications of simulations of surface and ground water hydrologic processes at different scales in various locations. One important science issue with a model covering such a large area is how hydrologic processes can be scaled to make the simulation problem tractable. An approach to parameterization of spatial variability in physical processes was developed to transfer responses traditionally quantified at small scales to the continental scale of interest. The simulated hydrologic components (i.e., major river flows, lake volumes, water-table depths, vadose-zone soil moisture and recharge rates) are reasonable and comparable to observed data. The presentation will shed light on research directions on how best to assess the impacts of environmental changes on the surface and ground water hydrology, and to evaluate altered hydrologic processes. This new generation of model is at the nexus of related fields of geoinformatics, cyberinfastructure in watersheds and remote measurements for scientific studies and water resources assessment in ground water.