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

了解流域的水文功能并确定流域径流对气候变化的敏感性

• 批准号: RGPIN-2020-04664
• 负责人: Ameli, Ali
• 金额: $ 2.55万
• 依托单位: University of British Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=751288
• 关键词: Understanding; hydrologic; function; catchments; identifying

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.

气候变化有望影响流量的大多数方面。这将影响水资源管理的所有部门，例如水分配和安全，以及洪水/干旱风险。没有时间和成本密集的数据收集和建模，就很难预测流域的流量对气候属性的变化（例如降雨）的敏感程度。这种不确定性源于评估给定集水区（尤其是地下）中存在哪些储水箱的能力，以及在雨水或融雪的丰度和短缺的情况下它们如何贡献水流。在集水区（例如，农业）中使用土地的变化也可能会改变集水区存储水的方式，并产生流水流动性，称为流域的水文功能（CHF）。为了有效地预期由于气候变化而导致集水区流量的变化，水文学领域需要一个框架来考虑易于达到的信息来表征CHF，以及随着不同程度的土地使用变化而改变的可能性。这样的框架可能会导致科学策略在不断变化的气候下管理水资源，为土地使用决策提供信息，并确定优先集水区以保护。我已经提高了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集水区中对其进行表征，具有重要的科学和管理意义。但是，在这种情况下，我自己和其他人的先前研究仅在某些类型的环境环境中进行，导致无法在CHF上开发广泛适用的框架。在接下来的五年中，我的目标是评估涵盖加拿大各种环境环境的大量集水区的水文功能。在这样做时，我将：1）确定最强烈确定CHF的因素； 2）开发能够表征CHF的新科学方程； 3）确定土地利用变化对CHF的影响；最终4）开发第一个基于过程的可推广框架，允许在加拿大研究不良的集水区中表征水文功能。为了实现这些目标，我们将利用我们最近的科学和方法论进步，包括新的基于功能的水文模型和加拿大范围的环境数据链接，并补充了数据挖掘算法和实验室实验。计划使用公平和包容的招聘和指导实践培训8 HQP（2博士学位，3 MSC，3 UG）。最终的框架将用于创建对整个加拿大气候变化和干旱/洪水脆弱地区的流量敏感性的地图，并为土地使用规划制定环境低影响的策略。鉴于该研究计划中考虑的环境环境的强烈梯度，我希望这些发现可以推断到世界其他景观中。