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SUMMARY:EESS talk on "Catchment storage\, chemical dynamics\, and hydrolog
 ical response\, on timescales from minutes to months"
DTSTART:20181030T121500
DTEND:20181030T131500
DTSTAMP:20260510T105902Z
UID:5d64272f357d6fd86d7c0d9797260e5a2d3dddd85a6c3ae128db9382
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Dr James W. Kirchner\, Professor of Physics of Environmental S
 ystems\, Environmental Systems Science\, ETH Zurich and Director\, Swiss F
 ederal Institute for Forest\, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) is a phys
 icist by training\, James Kirchner has worked in fields ranging from hydro
 logy\, aqueous geochemistry\, and geomorphology to evolutionary ecology an
 d paleobiology.  Much of his current work focuses on the flow\, chemistry
 \, and geomorphology of mountain streams.\n\nDr. Kirchner received his bac
 helor's and master's degrees from Dartmouth College\, and his Ph.D. from t
 he University of California\, Berkeley.  He was a member of the Berkeley 
 faculty from 1991 through 2010\, most recently as Goldman Distinguished Pr
 ofessor for the Physical Sciences and Director of Berkeley's Central Sierr
 a Field Research Stations.\n\nFrom 2007 to 2012 he served as Director of t
 he Swiss Federal Institute for Forest\, Snow\, and Landscape Research (WSL
 )\, where he supervised a scientific staff of 550\, and where he remains a
 s a senior scientist. He is currently Professor for the Physics of Environ
 mental Systems at ETH Zurich\, the Swiss federal technical university.\n\n
 He became a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2008.  He was the
  European Geosciences Union's 2013 Ralph Alger Bagnold Medalist and the Am
 erican Geophysical Union's 2016 Langbein Lecturer.\nAbstract:\nLandscapes 
 are characterized by preferential flow and pervasive heterogeneity on all 
 scales.  They therefore store and transmit water and solutes over a wide 
 spectrum of time scales\, with important implications for contaminant tran
 sport\, weathering rates\, and stream chemistry.  Catchment transit time 
 distributions are nonstationary\, reflecting fluctuations in precipitation
  forcing\, heterogeneity in catchments themselves\, and nonlinearity in th
 e mechanisms controlling subsurface storage and transport.  The challenge
  of empirically estimating these nonstationary transit time distributions 
 in real-world catchments\, however\, has only begun to be explored. \n\nI
 n the past\, chemical tracers and stable isotopes of water (18O and 2H) ha
 ve been widely used to separate event-scale hydrographs into "new" and "ol
 d" water\, based on short-term intensive isotope sampling campaigns focuse
 d on individual storm events.  We have recently developed and deployed a 
 "lab in the field"\, in which stable isotopes and major ions in precipitat
 ion and streamflow are measured automatically at hourly or sub-hourly reso
 lution\, for months at a time.  These measurements create new opportuniti
 es to study how rainfall becomes streamflow on timescales of minutes to mo
 nths following the onset of precipitation.  In this talk I will introduce
  these new data streams\, as well as new tools that can be used to infer c
 atchment storage dynamics and hydrologic response.
LOCATION:GR A3 32 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==GR%20A3%2032
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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