Hydrologic responses to concurrent changes in climate, land use and water use

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Water security is critical to social, political and economic stability, and environmental sustainability. Anthropogenic activities, such as land use change, water management, and natural resource extraction, impact environmental systems, including the hydrologic cycle. Understanding the interactions and feedbacks between them is necessary to ensure a safe and reliable water supply. The hydrologic responses to concurrent anthropogenic activities are particularly important as the synergistic effects can magnify or mitigate critical issues, including water availability and contaminant release and transport. Although recent research has highlighted the importance of an integrated approach for predicting hydrologic conditions, our understanding of the complex relationships between the hydrologic cycle and human activities remains incomplete. The long-term objective of my research program is to improve our understanding of the interactions and feedbacks between anthropogenic activities and natural environmental systems, focusing on implications for the terrestrial hydrologic cycle. With an emphasis on the development of effective and accessible modeling approaches, we will develop novel methods of identifying and quantifying the impacts of concurrent anthropogenic-driven processes on both the surface and groundwater systems. Specifically, we will differentiate between, and quantify, the contributions of climate, land use, and water use to changes in streamflow, with an emphasis on changes in groundwater discharge to streams. We will also assess how groundwater levels respond to changes in climate, and to changes in groundwater use that result from the same changes in climate. For both of these applications, we will improve the accessibility of these methods over existing approaches through innovative integration of globally-available datasets and computationally-frugal modeling approaches. Finally, we will develop new approaches to simulate how water management strategies affect processes driving both water quantity and quality, seeking to improve decision-making tools to mitigate negative impacts on water resources. The proposed research moves towards the program goal through model development, data integration, and knowledge transfer, providing a foundation to further improve our understanding of the feedbacks and interactions between anthropogenic activities and environmental systems, and guide resource management to ensure water security and environmental sustainability.