Understanding the hydrologic function of catchments and identifying catchment streamflow sensitivity to climate change

气候变化预计将影响径流的大部分方面。这将影响水资源管理的所有部门，如水的分配和安全，以及减少洪水/干旱风险。如果没有时间和成本密集的数据收集和建模，就很难预测集水区的径流对气候属性的变化有多敏感，例如降雨量。这种不确定性源于有限的能力，无法评估特定集水区(特别是地下)存在哪些储水室，以及在降雨或融雪丰缺时，这些储水室如何促进径流。改变集水区内土地的用途(例如农业)也可能改变集水区储存水和产生径流的方式--也就是众所周知的集水区的水文功能(CHF)。为了有效地预测气候变化导致的集水区径流变化，水文学领域需要一个框架，考虑到容易获得的信息来描述CHF，以及它随着不同程度的土地利用变化而变化的可能性。这样的框架可能导致制定科学战略，以管理水资源，为土地使用决策提供信息，并在不断变化的气候下确定优先保护的集水区。我推进了有关CHF的科学知识，并开发了新的技术和指标，以在世界各地的不同流域对其进行表征，具有重要的科学和管理意义。然而，之前我和其他人在这方面的研究只在某些类型的环境环境中进行，导致无法开发一个广泛适用的关于慢性心力衰竭的框架。在接下来的五年里，我的目标是评估涵盖加拿大各地大范围环境设置的大量集水区的水文功能。通过这样做，我将：1)确定最强烈地决定CHF的因素；2)开发能够表征CHF的新的科学方程；3)确定土地利用变化对CHF的影响；以及最终4)开发第一个基于过程的可概括的框架，从而能够描述加拿大境内研究较少的流域的水文功能。为了实现这些目标，我们将利用我们最新的科学和方法进步，包括新的基于函数的水文模型和加拿大范围内的环境数据联系，并辅之以数据挖掘算法和实验室实验。制定了培训8名总部合格人员(2名博士、3名硕士、3名UG)的计划，采用公平和包容的招聘和辅导做法。由此产生的框架将被用来创建关于水流对加拿大各地气候变化和干旱/洪水脆弱地区的敏感度的地图，并为土地利用规划制定对环境影响较小的战略。考虑到本研究计划考虑的环境环境的强烈梯度，我预计这一发现可以外推到世界各地的其他景观。

Climate change is expected to affect most aspects of streamflow. This will impact all sectors of water resource management such as water allocation and security, and flood/drought risk reduction. Without time-and cost-intensive data collection and modelling, it is difficult to predict how sensitive a catchment's streamflow is to changes in climatic attributes, such as rainfall. This uncertainty stems from limited capacity to assess what water storage compartments exist in a given catchment (especially underground), and how they contribute to streamflow, in times of rain or snowmelt abundance and shortage. Changes to the use of land within a catchment (e.g., agriculture) may also alter how a catchment stores water and generates streamflow-otherwise known as a Catchment's Hydrologic Function (CHF). To efficiently anticipate changes to a catchment's streamflow as a result of climate change, the field of hydrology requires a framework considering easily attainable information to characterize CHF, and how likely it is to alter with various degrees of land use change. Such a framework could lead to scientific strategies to manage water resources, inform land use decisions, and identify priority catchments for protection, under a changing climate. I have advanced the scientific knowledge on CHF and have developed new techniques and metrics to characterize it in different catchments around the world, with important scientific and management implications. However, previous research by myself and others in this context have been conducted only in certain types of environmental settings, leading to inability to develop a widely applicable framework on CHF. Over the next five years, my goal is to assess hydrologic function at a large number of catchments that cover a large spectrum of environmental settings across Canada. In so doing, I will: 1) identify the factors that most strongly determine CHF; 2) develop new scientific equations able to characterize CHF; 3) determine the impact of land-use change on CHF; and ultimately 4) develop the first process-based generalizable framework allowing for the characterization of hydrologic function in poorly-studied catchments across Canada. To achieve these goals, we will leverage our recent scientific and methodological advancements, including new function-based hydrologic model and Canada-wide environmental data linkage, supplemented with data-mining algorithms and laboratory experiments. Plans are in place to train 8 HQP (2 PhD, 3 MSc, 3 UG), using equitable and inclusive recruitment and mentoring practices. The resultant framework will be used to create maps on streamflow sensitivity to climate change and drought/flood vulnerable regions across Canada, and to develop environmentally low-impact strategies for land-use planning. Given the strong gradient of environmental setting considered in this research program, I expect that the findings can be extrapolated to other landscapes around the world.