EESS talk on "Catchments as hydro-biogeochemical reactors: can we predict their future?"
Event details
| Date | 12.03.2019 |
| Hour | 12:15 › 13:00 |
| Speaker | Dr Li LI, Associate professor, Li Reactive Water Group, Dept. Civil & Environmental Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, USA - is a visiting professor at the ECHO lab. Her research group works at the interface of hydrology and biogeochemistry, asking questions about interactions and feedbacks between water flow and biogeochemical transformation processes ranging from the pore scale to the watershed scale. Li has a PhD in Environmental Engineering and Water Resources from Princeton University and subsequently worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in USA before joining Penn State. |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Abstract:
How and how fast does biogeochemical signature respond to hydrological variations (and climate changes in general)? This question has lingered in catchment science for decades, with literature now boasting decades of concentration (C) and discharge (Q) data that record the Earth system response to changing environmental conditions. Diverse explanations abound in literature explaining contrasting CQ patterns of diverse solutes at rivers and streams worldwide, although a unifying framework is still missing. This talk will discuss recent work using recently-developed hydro-biogeochemical modeling in Coal Creek, Colorado, a high elevation headwater catchment in central Rocky Mountain in US that have seen significant alteration in water chemistry in recent years. We use decades of data and build virtual catchments to interrogate competing influences of hydrological and temperature on chemical weathering and organic carbon decomposition at the catchment scale. Derived functional relationships developed can explain contrasting CQ patterns from multiple watersheds of diverse climate, geology, and land cover conditions, pointing toward potentials for a unified, predictive framework.
How and how fast does biogeochemical signature respond to hydrological variations (and climate changes in general)? This question has lingered in catchment science for decades, with literature now boasting decades of concentration (C) and discharge (Q) data that record the Earth system response to changing environmental conditions. Diverse explanations abound in literature explaining contrasting CQ patterns of diverse solutes at rivers and streams worldwide, although a unifying framework is still missing. This talk will discuss recent work using recently-developed hydro-biogeochemical modeling in Coal Creek, Colorado, a high elevation headwater catchment in central Rocky Mountain in US that have seen significant alteration in water chemistry in recent years. We use decades of data and build virtual catchments to interrogate competing influences of hydrological and temperature on chemical weathering and organic carbon decomposition at the catchment scale. Derived functional relationships developed can explain contrasting CQ patterns from multiple watersheds of diverse climate, geology, and land cover conditions, pointing toward potentials for a unified, predictive framework.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- EESS - IIE
Contact
- Prof. Andrea Rinaldo, ECHO