Process based simulation of the hydrological cycle

The one below is a concept paper (or a review, under certain aspects) of researchers that thought at a certain moment of their carrier that lumped models were not enough. Criticism was often raised on this type of models (sometimes by bad modellers or by researchers in love with their own products: nobody's perfect).  Who follows me knows that both lumped (yes, up to a point) and distributed models are in my past research. Whatever party you belong to,  I think the paper is a good reading which summarises a lot of issues and give a view of the current state-of-art.

Clicking on the picture above, please find the paper's pdf.

A little history of Soil Science

A little and interesting history of Soils can be found in one of the EGU blog which I follow.

Here.

Water, Soil, Forests (The man who planted trees, III)

This is the presentation given for the annual day of forests. I am talking about the interaction of water (the hydrological cycle) with vegetation, soil and climate. As a modeller, I conclude about the challenge to model all of these complexities at various spatial and temporal scales. The other posts on the same topic are here.

Click on the Figure to see the presentation in Italian. Click here for the English version.
The short video synthesis made  (in Italian) for public who could not participate is here below.

Nice papers to read:

Bearup, L. A., Maxwell, R. M., Clow, D. W., & McCray, J. E. (2014). Hydrological effects of forest transpiration loss in bark beetle-impacted watersheds. Nature Climate Change, 4(6), 481–486. http://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2198

Benavides-Solorio, J. de D., & MacDonald, L. H. (2005). Measurement and prediction of post-fire erosion at the hillslope scale, Colorado Front Range. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 14(4), 457–18. http://doi.org/10.1071/WF05042

Bentz, B., Logan, J., MacMahon, J., Allen, C. D., Ayres, M., Berg, E., et al. (2013). Bark beetle outbreaks in western North America: Causes and consequences, 1–46.

Brovkin, V. (2002).  Vegetation-Climate Interactions . Journ. Phys. IV France, (12), 57–72.

Blöschl, G., Ardoin-Bardin, S., Bonell, M., Dorninger, M., Goodrich, D., Gutknecht, D., et al. (2007). At what scales do climate variability and land cover change impact on flooding and low flows? Hydrological Processes, 21(9), 1241–1247. http://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.6669

Brown, A. E., Zhang, L., McMahon, T. A., Western, A. W., & Vertessy, R. A. (2005). A review of paired catchment studies for determining changes in water yield resulting from alterations in vegetation. Journal of Hydrology, 310(1-4), 28–61. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2004.12.010

Brown, A. E. (2008, March 10). Predicting the effect of forest cover changes on flow duration curves. (L. Zhang, A. Western, & T. A. McMahon, Eds.).

Brubaker, K., Entekhabi, D., & Eagleson, P. S. (1993). Estimation of Continental Precipitation Recycling. Water Resources Res., 6(6), 1077–1089.

Eltahir, A. B., & Bras, R. L. (1994). Precipitation Recycling in the Amazon Basin. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 120, 861–880.

Entekhabi, D., Rodriguez-Iturbe, & Bras, R. L. (1992). Variability in Large-Scale Water Balance with Land Surface-Atmosphere Interaction. Journal of Climate, 5, 798–813.

Fatichi, S., Pappas, C., & Ivanov, V. Y. (2015). Modeling plant-water interactions: an ecohydrological overview from the cell to the global scale. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, n/a–n/a. http://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1125

Jenny, H. (1958). Role of the plant factor in the pedogenic functions. Ecology, 39(1), 5–16.

Johansen, M. P., Hakonson, T. E., & Breshears, D. D. (2001). Post-fire runoff and erosion from rainfall simulation: contrasting forests with shrublands and grasslands. Hydrological Processes, 15(15), 2953–2965. http://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.384

Johnson, D. L., Keller, E. A., & Rockwell, T. K. (1990). Dynamic pedogenesis: New views on some key soil concepts, and a model for interpreting quaternary soils. Quaternary Research, 33(3), 306–319. http://doi.org/10.1016/0033-5894(90)90058-S

Miles, J. (1985). The pedogenic effects of different species and vegetation types and the implications. Journal of Soil Science, 36, 371–384.

Pielke, R. A., Sr. (2001). Influence of the spatial distribution of vegetation and soils on the prediction of cumulus convective rainfall, 1–28.

Tague, C., & Dugger, A. L. (2010). Ecohydrology and Climate Change in the Mountains of the Western USA - A Review of Research and Opportunities. Geography Compass, 4(11), 1648–1663. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2010.00400.x

Trenberth, K. E. (1999). Atmospheric Moisture Recycling: Role of Advection and Local Evaporation. Journal of Climate, 12, 1368–1381.

Renjin

Renjin is a JVM-based interpreter for the R language. For Java developers  of scientific application, I think it is a must (but still I need to test it). It can be used in various ways and offers itself a simple interface to be used. The fraction of packages ported into it is here. 
For an introduction you can watch this webinar. But obviously you can have more by browsing Rnjin website.

Among others, gvSIG uses Renjin for making calculations.  The source code is available on GIThub.

Click on the Figure to go to Renjin website.

CLIMAWARE from the point of view of local vulnerability to climate change

This is one of the seminars of the project CLIMAWARE.  The topic in this case is the vulnerbability and the perceived vulnerability to climate change. This is functional to think, communicate and implements adaptation plans on a local scale.

Click on the Figure above for accessing the presentation contents.

Sci-hub

Sci-hub offers access to millions of papers. Is it piracy ? Well, since I give support with my reviews to some of those publishers who ask  35.95 $ for the products I help them to publish, I am taking, sometimes, some freedom. Certainly policies for Open Access to Science should be implemented soon.

Click on the image. In case sci-hub.io is blocked for you use sci-hub.bz or sci-hub.cc to access the website

Comments and data on sci-hub downloads from a Science article.

Update: Recently (August 3, 2016) I also discovere the Bookzz site. 

Di chi è l'acqua/To whom water belongs ?

This is the presentation given at the Green Week held in Trento between  March 4 and March 6 2016 in Trento.  The topic is the role of quantitative hydrology in understanding how to manage the resource. Everybody see the possible conflicts. Hydrologists give a quantitative basis for discussion. Slides are in Italian.

Click on the figure to see the presentation. References are linked inside the slides-show.