Summer Synthesis Institute

1. Summer Synthesis Institute Vancouver, British Columbia June 22 – August 5, 2009 Overview of Synthesis Project M. Sivapalan University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2. Unprecedented Types, Rates, Scales, and Magnitudes of Change

3. There is a human foot print on 83% of the land. The Human Footprint and the Last of the WildEric Sanderson et al. 2002 BioScience

5. NON-STATIONARITY

6. Change propagation • At a fixed point in space, change in time • Changes down-slope • Changes down-stream • Changes down-wind • Changes down the “human gradient”

7. Research Themes Hydromorphology: Human-Nature Interactions Interactions between hydrosphere and biosphere processes Interactions of landscape processes within intensively managed landscapes Evolution, structure and function of hydrologic subsystems in hillslopes Interactions between hydrologic and pedogenic processes Stochastic transport in heterogeneous media Principal Investigators: Siva Sivapalan, Praveen Kumar, Bruce Rhoads, Don Wuebbles For more information, email the project coordinator at jswilson@illinois.edu Water Cycle Dynamics in a Changing EnvironmentAdvancing Hydrologic Science through Synthesis Objective to organize and employ synthesis activities to produce transformational outcomes that will be utilized to improve the predictability of water cycle dynamics in a changing Earth environment.

8. Water Cycle Dynamics in a Changing EnvironmentAdvancing Hydrologic Science through Synthesis Objective to organize and employ synthesis activities to produce transformational outcomes that will be utilized to improve the predictability of water cycle dynamics in a changing Earth environment. Current Research Priorities • 1. Continue to define the goals and processes of hydrologic synthesis science and its relevance to global change research. • 2. Leverage team member expertise and student work ethic to improve fundamental understanding of: • a.) interactions at the hydrosphere-biosphere interface; and • b.) the significance of intensive land management on catchment hydrology. • 3. Expand the interdisciplinary reach of hydrologic synthesis through targeted activities built upon recent progress. • 4. Communicate improvements in predictability and the significance of synthesis science through formal and informal channels.

9. Session 1 Quantifying Vegetation Adaptation and Response to Variability in the Environment Ben RuddellArizona State University Siva SivapalanUniversity of Illinois Ciaran Harman University of Illinois Gavan McGrath University of Western Australia

10. Goal • Can we quantify the relationship between vegetation (NPP) and the precipitation water balance (Horton Index)? • Data-based analysis is happening at the University of Arizona. • Can we produce a simple process-based model to test hypotheses on how the adaptation and activity of vegetation controls the water balance (and vice versa)?

11. Session 4 Comparing catchment-based estimates of vegetation water use (Horton Index) with remote sensing measures of vegetation structure, water use, & productivity Peter Troch University of Arizona Paul Brooks University of Arizona

12. Background Hydrological research has demonstrated the strong control that ecosystems have on the partitioning of precipitation into runoff and ET. Ecological research has focused on the strong control that water availability has on productivity.

13. Session 2 Contaminant Dynamics across Scales: Temporal and Spatial Patterns Nandita Basu University of Iowa Suresh Rao Purdue University Aaron Packman Northwestern University

14. Single Tile (1 km2) Cedar Creek(700 km2) Mississippi Basin (3 million square km) Tile Network(10 km2) • Contaminants: • Nutrients (C, N, P) • Pesticides • Hormones 14

15. Linking Scale and Process Continental to Global Regional/Watershed Channel/Water-body Benthic/Interfacial Cellular Need to link Structure, Transport, Transformation, and Microbial Activity across many spatial and temporal scales. Aaron Packman

16. Session 3 Temporal and spatial patterns of basin scale sediment yield Marwan Hassan University of British Columbia Aaron Packman Northwestern University

17. Data Based Study: Investigation of Emergent Patterns • Top-down questions: pattern description, measurement and identification. What can we learn from existing datasets? • Theoretical questions: ‘deep, why type questions’: Why does this pattern emerge? Under what circumstances do we expect it to occur? What are the underlying rules? • Bottom-up questions: what are the consequences of these patterns (what are their effects on processes of interest)? How do they scale up? How does the understanding (e.g., their ecological function, organizing principles etc.) improve our capacity to make predictions? • Human interactions: how do human activities interact with these patterns in time and space? How are the patterns affected by human activities? • Study of patterns needs a multitude of perspectives (concepts, data, methods etc. from different disciplines) • Synthesis means people with different backgrounds and experiences coming together to study a common question or pattern or prediction problem and to help each other to generate increased understanding