EAPSI: Model Analysis of Water Exchange Between the Land and Atmosphere Over Grassland and Cropland Regions

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This project will investigate the relationship between land surface and atmospheric water transport over grassland and cropland regions such as the United States Southern Great Plains and Chinese grasslands. The PI will collaborate with Dr. Youngryel Ryu and his laboratory students at Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea. Dr. Ryu is the developer of the Breathing Earth System Simulator (BESS) model that estimates how much water is exchanged between the land and atmosphere. This model provides global estimates of water exchange from 2000-2015. The PI will be analyzing the modeled results to see how well it can estimate the amount of water that is exchanged over grassland and cropland regions. Understanding the water cycle over agricultural regions, such as the Southern Great Plains, is important for water budgeting, weather prediction, crop and livestock management, and many other applications. The project focuses on the Evapotranspiration (ET) aspect of the water cycle over grassland and cropland regions. The region of interest for the project is over the United States Southern Great Plains that includes Kansas, Oklahoma, and northern portions of Texas as well as grassland regions in China. The BESS model developed by Dr. Ryu produces 1 to 5 km spatial and 8-day temporal resolution of modeled ET over the entire globe from 2000-2015. A validation of BESS will be constructed by comparing the modeled ET with observed ET at various observing sites in the regions. The PI will assess the spatial and temporal variations of ET over the regions of interest using the modeled output. This information can then be used to determine how agricultural practices and weather patterns influence ET in these regions and how ET in these areas may respond to climate change.This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the National Research Foundation of Korea.