Virtual Hydrologic Environment (VHE) - as a bridge between surface and subsurface hydrology

应开发一个虚拟水文环境（VHE），以缩小目前地表和地下水文建模之间的差距。VHE是水文系统（HS）中发生的物理过程的通用表示。HS可以细分为地表水以及土壤和含水层隔室中的水（图1），形成地下系统。HS内部相应的水文过程是地表的流动过程，如湖泊，河流和地表径流，土壤中的流动过程，如土壤中的非饱和流和多孔和裂隙介质中的地下水流。VHE被定义为集成的数据和模型环境。与以数据为中心的地理信息系统（GIS）或基于物理过程的数值模拟器相比，VHE具有将地质和水文信息存储在通用可理解的GeoHydro/DataBase（GH/DB）结构中的能力。GH/DB将以一致的方式包含地表和次表层的数据组成部分，这在以前是没有实现的，因为通常这两个部分在水文数据库和建模中只被单独考虑。此外，VHE可与地理信息系统软件和遥感技术的能力相结合，便于与数值模型相结合，如本项目计划使用的基于物理学的水文模拟器GeoSys/RockFlow。由于内在的耦合过程使得水文相互作用难以模拟，因此鼓励采用多学科方法，通过与其他相关科学的整合以及跨学科边界的交叉施肥，拓宽水文视角并促进水文科学的发展。VHE作为地表和地下水文学之间的桥梁，可以提高我们对水文循环，水，地球，生态系统和人类之间的相互作用及其在气候变化背景下的作用的理解。这是一个跨学科的研究建议，涉及以下学科：地理学，水文学，地质学，科学计算和信息技术。通过使用科学计算和信息技术的方法，将不同地球科学的数据库和模型集成在一起，将导致在水文模型中对HS的全面和一致的表示，从而增强我们对HS不同分区之间的相互作用和耦合过程的理解。本研究计划以中国最大的淡水湖鄱阳湖作为国际合作框架中的一个应用区域。

A Virtual Hydrologic Environment (VHE) shall be developed to close the current gap between surface and subsurface hydrological modelling. A VHE is a generic representation of the physical processes that take place in the hydrological system (HS). The HS can be subdivided into surface water as well as water in soil and aquifer compartments (Fig 1) which form the subsurface system. The corresponding hydrological processes inside a HS are flow processes at the surface, like lakes, rivers and overland flow, flow processes in the soil, like unsaturated flow in soils and groundwater flow in porous and fractured media. The VHE is defined as an integrated data and model environment. Compared with the data-centred Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or physical process based numerical simulators, VHE has the ability to store geological and hydrological information in a common understandable GeoHydro/DataBase (GH/DB) structure. The GH/DB will contain the data components of the surface and subsurface in a consistent manner, which has not been achieved before as commonly both parts were only considered separately in hydrological databases and modelling. In addition, VHE can be combined with the capabilities of GIS software and remote sensing technology and facilitates the integration with numerical models, e.g. physics-based hydrological simulator GeoSys/RockFlow as it is planned for the present project. As the inherent coupled processes make the hydrologic interactions difficult to simulate, a multi-disciplinary approach is encouraged that enables a broadening of the hydrologic perspective and the advancement of hydrologic science through the integration with other related sciences and the through cross-fertilization across disciplinary boundaries. VHE as a bridge between surface and subsurface hydrology can improve our understanding of the hydrologic cycle, the interactions between water, earth, ecosystems and man and its role in the context of climate change. This is an interdisciplinary research proposal, and the following disciplines are involved: geography, hydrology, geology, scientific computing, and information technology. The proposed integration of databases and modeling from the different geo-sciences by the use of methods from scientific computing and information technology will lead to a comprehensive and consistent representation of the HS in hydrological modeling, and thus will enhance our understanding about the interactions and coupling processes between the different compartments of the HS. This research program plans to take Poyang Lake, the biggest freshwater lake in China, as an application area in an internatiopnal collaborative framework.