Multi-scale Monitoring and Modeling of Land Use and Climate Change Impacts on the Terrestrial Hydrologic Cycle: Implications for the Great Lakes Basin

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Multi-scale Monitoring and Modeling of Land Use and Climate Change Impacts on the Terrestrial Hydrologic Cycle in the Great Lakes BasinThis award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Vadose-zone soil moisture is an important driver of processes in agricultural, hydrological, ecological, and climate systems, yet the detailed nature of plant water use across ranges of scales is often poorly characterized. With projected changes in climate and land use (including afforestation, urbanization, and agricultural intensification), there is a critical need to understand the likely impacts on the hydrologic cycle and ecosystem health. Important hydrological and biophysical processes are not adequately characterized with point estimates, and models of root-water uptake are generally unable to accurately predict such changes. Our objectives are to: 1) quantify multi-scale dynamics of vegetation-water interactions across different land cover types to improve predictive capabilities of hydrologic models, and 2) explore the impacts of land use and climate changes on local to regional scale hydrologic fluxes. To explore the likely effects of projected changes in climate and land cover, we propose to use time-lapse electrical resistivity imaging and a novel coupling of a fully-integrated terrestrial hydrology model with a dynamic vegetation growth model to study managed and natural sites along a climate gradient across a range of soils. Our research will provide: 1) improved knowledge and predictive capability of short- and long-term processes that drive the terrestrial water cycle, 2) root-zone moisture and root-development data that will improve coupled land surface and climate models, and 3) quantitative information about implications of land use and climate changes across a range of scales.