Hydromorphology or Hydrology in an Ever Changing World: Role of water in planetary evolution at time

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Hydromorphology or Hydrology in an Ever Changing
World Role of water in planetary evolution at
time scales of centuries to millenia

• Upmanu Lall
• Columbia University

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Example Questions motivating Hydromorphology

• How has water influenced the history of man and
  life on Earth?
• How has man determined the history, distribution
  and pathways of water?
• How have climate variations and change determined
  water and life at different scales, places and
  times?
• How has water constrained and determined climate?
• When/how will the human induced hydrologic change
  dominate that due to climate, and in turn
  determine aspects of regional and global climate
  change and variability?
• How can we assess or predict a hydrologic future
  for the 21st century to address impending
  concerns of water stress for man and life given
  potentially dramatic hydrologic changes due to
  changes in seasonal and long term climate
  variability and to human factors?
• How will we manage such changes?

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A Semi-classical View
Nonstationarity?
Design Long Term Risk Management
Manage Variability
Operation Manage Residual Risk
Society Goals
Hydrology
Structure
Curiosity
Processes
Dynamics
Evolution
Planetary Context (bio-geo-human-systems)
Do we have satisfactory models for long term
evolution?
Fluid Mechanics
Knowledge
Stochastic Processes
Challenges 1. Spatial Heterogeneity, Scales
Continuum, Structure of Turbulence/Transport 2.
Long Term Evolution (not much literature, except
for climate) Open or Closed System? Strong
Feedbacks with other earth systems
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A Restricted View of the Earth System
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A Restricted View of the Earth System
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A Restricted View of the Earth System
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Typical Model Structure

• Non-Autonomous Forced Dynamical System

A number of inter-acting stores ? state
variables Forced by exogenous variables that are
time varying (continuous or intermittent) Spatiall
y averaged, discrete or continuous time Focus
(often) Fluxes, Patterns, Mean Residence Times
Does this system have interesting
dynamics? Suppose we think of this system as a
RLC network Are the internal dynamics of x
dominated by y? ? dynamics of y? Analogies --
Role of R? C? L? Are there strong ve and ve
feedbacks across x Nonstationarity in x ? changes
in y, changes in ?, changes in f(.,.,.) or all
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Hydrology as practiced

• Dominant interest in
• Mean value statistics of state variables
• Stimulus response modeling (spatial emphasis,
  short term)
• Event Models
• Continuous Simulation Models
• Components can often be decomposed into separate
  models
• Slow components (e.g. groundwater) modeled
  separately (forced by fast component model) and
  provide initial conditions for stimulus-response
  of faster component
• Cumulative effects modeling is unidirectional and
  naïve model formulation does not explicitly
  consider full dynamics or interactions across
  interfaces
• Long term Dynamics either in terms of
  statistical properties of state variables or
  parametrically determined by statistical
  properties of exogenous variables
• No good paradigm available for modeling long term
  dynamics including feedbacks across key exogenous
  variables at appropriate space and time scales
  (we are in a discovery phase)

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From hydrology to hydromorphology

• Hydrology
• open terrestrial system
• hillslope/basin scales
• response function to forcing
• forecasts from initial and boundary value
  problems
• Prescribed topography, soils, vegetation, use,
  climate (rain, etc)
• gt Stationary probability distributions whether
  the problem is treated deterministically or
  statistically

• Hydromorphology
• Interacting planetary stores ? hierarchy ?
  closed system?
• Regimes in space-time, predictability,
  transition, stability
• Parametric evaluation of boundary value problems
• Boundary conditions/interfaces evolve -- coupled
• gt holistic? view of global and local
  hydrologic cycle and its dependence on changing
  conditions ? non-stationary, unless conditional
  probability

Weather
Climate
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Example River Basin Hydromorphology Water and
Humans

• Non-Autonomous Forced Dynamical System

But . Now x includes human population state
variables, technology, infrastructure and income
state variables as endogenous to the
system Human, infrastructure and river networks
interact to prescribe both the evolution of the
water state variables and the networks
themselves Prediction examples Long term
evolution of population patterns in the river
basin Long term evolution of water and other
infrastructure Changing biota and landscape
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Planetary Hydromorphology

• Non-Autonomous Forced Dynamical System?

Now as far as the water cycle is concerned, we
could have closure but many, many other cycles
have to be accounted for interactions across all
planetary stores human dynamics accounted for as
endogenous External forcing is solar
radiation Example prediction problems Gaia
Symbiosis across vegetation, atmosphere and
humans through water? Population density
spatial and temporal variations The Greenhouse,
the Thermohaline Conveyer, Abrupt Climate Change
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Floods (extremes in a changing world)

• Local Changes in Flood Frequency due to
  Urbanization/Land Use Change etc
• Climate induced Changes in Floods ??

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Floods in a changing climate
Nature, 2002
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Nature, 2003
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Russian River, CA Flood Event
Russian River, CA Flood Event of 18-Feb-04
Atmospheric River generates flooding
CZD
Slide from Paul Neimans talk
Russian River flooding in Monte Rio,
California 18 February 2004
IWV (cm)
GPS IWV data from near CZD 14-20 Feb 2004
Bodega Bay
Atmospheric river
IWV (cm)
IWV (inches)
Cloverdale
photo courtesy of David Kingsmill
10 rain at CZD in 48 hours
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SST Composites for Extreme Floods Coast of
Western US Look for what happens by latitude 60
years per station, 50 stations
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Wavelet Analysis of 1000 year sample of annual
maximum NINO3 from a 110,000 year integration of
the Cane-Zebiak Model with stationary forcing (
Clement and Cane, 1999)
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The Colorado River Compact (1922)
2005 Headline
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Hydrologic/Climatic Variability
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Severity and Frequency of Colorado River Compact
Failure (w/ and w/o Lake Powell)
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River Basins and Humans (population density) is
there a connection?Feedbacks?Co-evolution?
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Development Trajectories in River Basins
Development
Utilization
Allocation
Hypothesis In a given climate and technology,
position on the river network has been a
determinant of human population and its
infrastructure development Role of mean supply
vs role of variability in space and time
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Human ?Hydrology ?Climate ?

• Scale and Direction of Human Feedbacks

Most ecological species (w/o predators) have
population growth dynamics that are not too
different from logistic, with carrying capacity
determined by local resources. Is water a likely
resource constraint? If yes, is it a local or
global constraint? How is it manifest? Scoping
the feedback, as a function of scale.
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Urban Forest Management (evapotranspiration rates)

• Ring Porous Wood Only
• assume 15 sq mi forest SLC
• 3 MG per day
• SLC indoor 44 MG per day

Source Craig Forster
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Marshall et al, 2001
S. Florida draining the swamps changes
regional moisture recycling -- desertification
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Rivers have undergone significant degradation in
flow and quality as well Width of Ganges at the
confluence with Yamuna is now typically 3 to 4 km
smaller
With all these benefits, it is not surprising
that farmers and entrepreneurs have invested
around US12 billion in groundwater pump
structures. This sum is huge, especially when
compared with the US20 billion of public money
spent on surface-water irrigation schemes over
the last 50 years
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Large Scale Irrigation changes the Monsoon?
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Irrigation ? changed water vapor flux
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(No Transcript)
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A Proposal to Link Major Indian River
Systems 160 Billion Capital Cost 33 Dams (9
Major) 30 Major Canals covering 12,500km 34
million hectares to be irrigated (12x Area of
Bangladesh) 30 of current 34GW of
hydropower Flood Control Navigation
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VIRTUAL WATER FLOWS (1995)measured in crop ET,
cereals
EU (15) excluding intra-trade
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VIRTUAL WATER FLOWS (2025)measured in crop ET,
cereals
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Research Questions developed by the
hydromorphology working group

• Primary Challenge
• What is important, when, where and how?
• How to develop and test a suitable low order
  dynamical modeling system to understand the
  currency of water in global evolution
• How can data sets be developed to support
  hypothesis development for long term evolution of
  the Gaia system
• How can we learn and build from integrated
  hydrology structure-evolution modeling and data
  sets
• Decomposition of Climate and Human Factors
• Low frequency climate oscillations translate into
  systematically changing frequency and intensity
  of precipitation and aquifer recharge/discharge.
• How are these manifest in natural and modified
  hydrology in different climate zones?
• What are the dominant frequencies of response of
  different hydrologic components?
• How do they depend on spatial scale and the
  spatial distribution of development in the
  system?
• What are key climatic or development thresholds
  that lead to abrupt hydrologic change?

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Questions continued

• Water and the Development of Societies
  Agent/Environment Interaction
• Does human control and development of surface
  and subsurface water fluxes superposed on the
  pattern of climatic exigencies lead to emergent
  and predictable patterns or cycles of
  infrastructure development, hydrologic
  modification and climate impact?
• Is the observed scaling of population density
  with area related to position on the drainage
  network, and the seasonal and interannual
  variation of hydrologic fluxes over the drainage
  network?
• What is the role played by agriculture and
  ecosystems in determining water use and human
  population density?
• How does the population distribution and scaling
  with area change as storage infrastructure and
  other technological innovations change the
  variability and scaling of hydrologic fluxes with
  area?
• From Human to Water to Climate
• How have regional hydrologic changes induced by
  human activity modified regional climate?
• How does changing planetary temperature,
  terrestrial biota and land use translate into
  changes in atmospheric water composition and the
  hydrologic cycle?
• How do these changes determine a future planetary
  climate?