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Symposium caps off 2009 Hydrologic Synthesis Summer Institute

capstone participants

Dr. Murugesu Sivapalan and colleagues from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are leading an effort to advance the predictability of human-induced change propagation (climatic, land-use and land-cover) through the hydrologic system, both in time and over space, using "synthesis". An intensive summer institute and concluding capstone symposium were recently held by this group in Vancouver, B.C. at the University of British Columbia.

A diverse selection of 11 students and 12 rotating mentors spent 6 weeks carving new paths using "hydrologic synthesis". This team used a patterns-based approach to demonstrate the feasibility of developing a novel, unified and robust predictive framework that is focused on the cascading of hydrologic variability across a range of scales (local-- hillslope -- watershed --river basin), and their impact on nutrient transport and export.

The summer institute projects shared the common perspective of the landscape as comprising a set of dynamic, cascading, hierarchical, non-linear filters, which propagate and modify the variability inherent to the climatic and land-use inputs, and highlight the relative roles of climatic, transport (hydrologic) and reaction (biogeochemical) timescales, the role of memory or legacy effects, and the buffering role of ecosystems (e.g, vegetation, micro-organisms). Two specific paths of exploration included  1) analysis of inter-annual variability of the water balance and vegetation response, expressed as the ratio, H=E/W, of annual evapotranspiration (E) to plant available water (W), termed the Horton Index and 2) examination of inter-annual variability in nutrient delivery ratio (NDR) as moderated by interactions between hydrologic and biogeochemical processes across the climate-hillslope-stream network continuum.

CUAHSI co-hosted a concluding event, where 12 additional colleagues, primarily early career individuals, gathered to discuss the summer's work and share their own progress. Drs. Francina Dominguez (Arizona) and Darrel Jenerette (UC-Riverside), 2007 CUAHSI Early Career Fellows, were among the attendees. Summer institute students and mentors are now preparing to formally present their results at Fall AGU.