Medium term important questions in hydrology

This is part of the IAHS initiative in identifying some important questions in today's hydrology. As you know from the previous post, I made my eleven question questions. From the colleagues who participated to the call they received a decent agreement. However, during the phase of thinking, there was a refocusing (which I believe was useful) and a request to look to topics or issues that could be answered or solved in a few years. More specific, less oriented to basic questions.

This brought to a different set of questions (whose formulation I did not participated actively). Finally, Gunther Blöschl (GS) writes about the final screening that happened at the Wien Symposium: "On Saturday we had three rounds of discussions in four break out groups and one final plenary discussion. In each round we discussed the questions, merged them, split them and reworded them as needed followed by a voting on prioritising the questions. The voting was for gold/silver/bronze/remove in each of the three break out group rounds. Only the gold and silver ones were retained for the plenary with an additional round of voting (by the entire plenary) for gold, silver or removing them from the list. The idea of the process was to whittle down the 260 questions initially proposed to a more coherent and smaller set of those questions deemed most important by the participants. The process resulted in 16 gold and 29 silver questions which are posted here. "
I think it is important to see what was chosen to have a poll about what the community (mostly the European one?) thinks it is important, even if, maybe, not fundamental.

On spatial interpolation

Introduction to spatial interpolation (slides here)

Kriging rational (slides here)

A little more on (semi)variogram (slides here)

More material on the main page.

Introduction to Solar radiation and its computation

Here they are the video of introduction to solar radiation for hydrologists. There is not any special in this. You can see all our contributions and literature on the topic in these posts.

Introduction to Radiation - Planck and Stefan-Boltzmann laws  (slides here)

Radiation from Sun to Earth (slides here)

Radiation vs latitude (slides here)

Attenuation of solar radiation by the atmosphere (slides here)

Copying with terrain (slides here)

Long wave radiation (slides here)

Dalton medal 2018 went to Gaby Katul

Gaby Katul (GS) is one of the most prominent hydrologists around the world (if this statement can have a meaning): his production is extremely high both in quality and quantity and for any is a lighthouse to follow. His production is especially directed to study turbulence and eco-hydrology. Therefore there is no doubt that his Dalton medal, received this week at EGU general assembly is well deserved. I could not be in Wien this year. However, I asked Gaby if he can send to me his presentation that all the present qualified as outstanding.

Please clicking on the above figure access and enjoy it.

Schymanski & Or model for Evapotranspiration in GEOFRAME

In trying to move out from Penman-Monteith scheme, we arrived to the Schymasky and Or paper. It re-analyses the calculation of Transpiration of a leaf. In our work we are trying to extend their contribution to the entire canopy and subsequently to an entire catchment. As in our tradition our work is both theoretical (in the analysis of equations) and numerical up to the implementation. The results of our efforts are presented in the next poster that was shown both at the Hydromod 2018 conference and at EGU general assembly in Wien.

You can find it directly at the blog TranspirAction (by Michele Bottazzi) or clicking on the Figure above. The portrait version used in Tübingen is here.

GEOframe-NewAGE becomes operational

Marialaura Bancheri after her Ph.D. defense mainly worked at university of Basilicata in Potenza under the supervision of Professor Salvatore Manfreda (GS) to apply GEOframe-NewAGE infrastructures to the realtime forecasting of discharges in Basilicata region. Salvatore presented the result of their work at EGU Wien 2017. Please below, find the presentation about the system implemented.

Clicking on the figure, you can access the slides. The work in Basilicata is a great achievement, even if only a few of the potentialities of the system were exploited.

Towards the simultaneous account of Water and Energy budgets (a.k.a. GEOtop 3.0)

There are several ways to categorize this work. One way is to see it inserted in the GEOtop 3.0 project that aims to rebuild GEOtop physics and informatics. Another way is to see it inserted in the work to get better cryospheric parameterisations. A third way is to see it as a part of the process delineate in my professorship talk.  More pragmatically, it represents a new implementation of the coupled Richards equation and energy budget by using sound numerics and OMS3.
No easy to read. It requires application.

You can see the presentation at the OSF site, here.

Category theory

In feeling that Hydrology needs new mathematical-physics, I explored several directions (Information Theory, Statistics, Causality theory, Algebraic topology, Thermodynamics -!-, and not very much the usual paraphernalia that modern physics uses whose taste I kind think to know, Petri Nets) and I arrived to category theory. Category theory is the mathematics of connections and retro-actions represented in graphical form. I arrived here because I think that expanding  hydrology to Earth System Science, it opens to the world of connections, and understanding connections means understanding complexity. 

The posts by Tai-Danae Bradley are really and enjoyable starting. Especially if we do not really care to fully understand what the examples means (since they cover whole branches of mathematics).

• What is Category theory anyway

For other definitions, please give a look to this new book by 

• Brendan Fong (GS) and David I. Spivak (GS), Seven Sketches in Compositionality, an invitation to Applied Category Theory

Just at the first pages, it also address to other books, and I also found

• Emily Riehl, Category theory in context

I collected many other books and papers about CT. However, if you want to start, start from these two. Eventually you can subscribe to the Azimuth forum and enroll John Baez course. 

GEOFRAME-NewAGE (a.k.a. JGrass-NewAGE) main publications

Please find below the main papers and the Ph.D. dissertations related to the GEOFRAME-NewAGE system. (You can find general information on GEOFRAME NewAGE starting from this post).

13 - Bancheri, Marialaura, Riccardo Rigon, and Salvatore Manfreda. 2019. The GEOframe-NewAge Modelling System Applied in a Data Scarce Environment. WATER 12 (1): 86. 

12 - Bancheri, M., Serafin, F., Bottazzi, M., Abera, W., Formetta, G., & Rigon, R. (2018). The design, deployment and testing of Kriging models in GEOframe. Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 1–31. http://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2017-310

11 - Bancheri, M., A flexible approach to the extimation of water budgets and its connection to the travel time theory, Ph.D. Dissertation, 2017

10 - Abera, W; Formetta, G.; Brocca, L.; Rigon, R.; Water budget modelling of the Upper Blue Nile basin using the JGrass-NewAge model system and satellite data, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 3145-3165, 2017,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-3145-2017

9 - Abera, W; Formetta, G.; Borga, M.; Rigon, R.; Estimating the water budget components and their variability in a Pre-Alpine basin with NewAge-JGrass, Advances in Water Resources, 2017

8 - Abera, W. - Modelling water budget at a basin scale using JGrass-NewAge system, Ph.D. Dissertation, Università di Trento, 2016

7 - Formetta, G., Bancheri M., Rigon R., Performances of site-specific parameterizations of longwave radiation,  Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 4641-4654, 2016, http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/4641/2016/
doi:10.5194/hess-20-4641-2016

6 -  Formetta G. ,  Antonello A. , Franceschi S. , David O., Rigon R.,  Digital watershed representation within the NewAge-JGrass system. Boletin Geologico y Minero, 125 (3): 371-381, 2014. ISSN: 0366-0176

5 -  Formetta G., David O., Kampf S., Rigon R., Snow water equivalent modeling components in NewAge-JGrass, Geosci. Model Dev., 7, 725-736, 2014

4 -  Formetta G.,  Antonello A., Franceschi S., David O., and Rigon R., Hydrological modelling with components: A GIS-based open-source framework, Environmental Modelling & Software, 5 (2014), 190-200}

3- Formetta, G.,  Hydrological modelling with components: the OMS3 NewAge-JGrass system, Doctoral Dissertation, Università di Trento, 2013

2 -  Formetta G., Rigon R., Chavez J.L., David O., The short wave radiation model in JGrass-NewAge System, Geosci. Model Dev., 6, 915-928, 2013, www.geosci-model-dev.net/6/915/2013/, doi:10.5194/gmd-6-915-2013

1 -  Formetta, G., Mantilla, R., Franceschi, S.,  Antonello A., Rigon R., The JGrass-NewAge system for forecasting and managing the hydrological budgets at the basin scale: models of flow generation and propagation/routing, Geoscientific Model Development, Volume: 4 Issue: 4 Pages: 943-955, DOI: 10.5194/gmd-4-943-201, 2011

NewAGE is based on the Object Modelling System whose main reference is the following:

0- David, O., Ascough, J.C. II, Lloyd, W., Green, T.R., Rojas, K.W., Leveasley, G.H., Ahuja, L.R., A software engineering perspective on environmental modeling framework design: The Object Modeling System, Environn. Modelling & Software, 201-213, 2013

P.S. - The system has been formerly named Jgrass-NewAGE but we though it was better to avoid possible misunderstandings with the GRASS community (that we deeply love) and changed the name. Besides, GEOFRAME better interprets the spirit of the new components than JGrass.

Travel-Time Based Modelling of Transport in Hydrological Systems

This is one of the posters I will present next 5th of April at Hydromod2018.

It present some of our results in TT theory and conveys the fact that, given a set of equations, the travel time distribution is (obviously) set. There are no hidden degree of freedom. All of it is contained in the paper about age-ranked equations. Clicking on the Figure you have the high resolution pdf.