Archive - Researcher of the Month

Dr. Murugesu Sivapalan

Dr. Murugesu Sivapalan is among the first faculty hired through the new Center for Water as a Complex Environmental System (CWACES). Dr. Sivapalan is housed jointly in Geography and Civil and Environmental Engineering, both being part of CWACES. Siva, as he is popularly known, has extensive background in civil engineering and hydrology, and considers himself a "watershed hydrologist." Proudly proclaiming that he has "had the honor of living in 5 continents," Dr. Sivapalan comes to the University of Illinois with wide international experience, including in Sri Lanka (where he completed his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering), Thailand (Masters degree in Water Resources Engineering), Nigeria (where he worked as a civil engineering consultant), United States (at Princeton University, where he obtained his PhD), and Australia (he spent the past 17 years at the University of Western Australia, rising to full professor in 1999). In between he also had two sabbaticals in Vienna (Austria) and Delft (The Netherlands). These experiences have provided Dr Sivapalan with a broad world view, both personally, and professionally as a hydrologist.

Dr. Sivapalan has considerable research experience with over 90 journal publications, and the recipient of numerous research awards. Throughout his career he has investigated both theoretical and applied problems. One of his major accomplishments was the development of his own large scale hydrological model for watersheds, starting from first principles. With training in both engineering and hydrological science, Siva approaches hydrological problems from both engineering and science perspectives, attempting to avoid a solely engineering approach, with its prime emphasis on problem solving. Instead he always attempts to "use problem solving to advance the science" and to "use advances in science towards problem solving." This interest in integration across different perspectives is continuing to influence his development as a scholar. Dr. Sivapalan has become very interested in how hydrological perspectives interact with the perspectives of other disciplines, such as geomorphology, biology, ecology and human-environment interactions, and how these different perspectives can help further understand hydrological principles. Dr. Sivapalan, who has experience in theoretical and modeling studies as well as in field studies, suggested, "When you go from the laboratory or the computer to the real world, you must ask how the water cycle processes interacts with ecological and geomorphological processes?" Hydrology in the past was often perceived as a "physical problem," according to Dr. Sivapalan, but this view is changing, as scientists begin to further understand that multiple perspectives, hydrological, ecological, geomorphological etc., as well as theoretical and applied, are necessary to attempt to understand hydrological phenomena, and to solve practical problems.

The new cross-discipline CWACES will provide much of the integration and continued professional development Sivapalan has been seeking. "The Center for Water as a Complex Environmental System acknowledges all these things, and includes also the human component, which is critical. I am excited about this philosophy, and this is what brought me to the U of I, and the Center for Water, especially the potential they offer for collaborative work," Dr. Sivapalan said. He hopes to learn from the other sciences, and bring those different perspectives into his research. Simultaneously, he is excited about collaborating with scientists who may be conducting field experiments, hoping to offer them a theoretical perspective, while at the same time, also learning from the field experiences.

Talking about what research he hopes to accomplish at the U of I, Dr. Sivapalan said, "I want to advance and leave behind elements of a new theory of watershed hydrology, consisting of new 'laws,' or 'organizing principles.' We haven't discovered all the laws or organizing principles that govern hydrological behavior. Without these the models we use for predictions continue to be divorced from reality. What are these 'organizing principles'?" As he has traveled around the world, he has noted that you can find simple patterns in landscapes, which reflect underlying hydrological, ecological and land-forming processes. Dr Sivapalan wants to investigate these patterns to understand the organizing principles behind them. This will necessarily involve bringing together a wide range of perspectives, including geomorphologists, climatologists, soil scientists, and ecologists, which the CWACES can readily provide. The ultimate goal of this line of research is to permit hydrologists to make inferences or predictions of hydrological behavior on the basis of observed patterns on the landscape. Dr. Sivapalan's ambition is to contribute towards the ultimate development and propagation of a new level of "hydrological wisdom."