USGS Contributions to the Climate Change Science ProgramHYDROCLIMATOLOGYThe Global Change Hydrology Program was begun in 1990 to develop data, understanding, and predictive capabilities related to water and associated aspects of carbon and greenhouse gases as they interact with global systems. Global Change Hydrology has two broad components: 1) investigations of hydroclimatic variability, and 2) studies of the biogeochemistry of greenhouse gases. This includes identification of seasonal variations in regional streamflow in relation to atmospheric circulation (for regional streamflow prediction and flood/drought hazard assessment); the linkage between atmospheric circulation and snowpack accumulation (for forecasting spring and summer water supply in the western United States and for flood forecasting) as well as glacier mass balance; and the physical and chemical variability in riverine and estuarine environments in relation to large-scale atmospheric and oceanic conditions (to discriminate natural from human-induced effects on such systems). It also includes documenting the long-term behavior of hydrologic systems in response to past climatic variations and changes (from decades to hundreds of thousands of years) as well as more recent (decadal) hydrologic trends.
The U.S. Geological Survey initiated the Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets (WEBB) program in 1991 to understand the processes controlling water, energy, and biogeochemical fluxes over a range of temporal and spatial scales and to understand the interactions of these processes, including the effects of atmospheric and climatic variables. WEBB research watersheds form a geographically and ecologically diverse set of environments for investigating the interactive effects of changes in CO2, climate, and biogeochemistry on the terrestrial carbon cycle; how global change will affect biogeochemical interactions with the hydrologic cycle and surface energy balance; and how global change will affect biogeochemical controls over the transport of water, nutrients, and materials from land to freshwater ecosystems. U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey URL: http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/poster/hydroclimatology.html Page Contact Information: ESD Web Team Page Last Modified: Thu 15-May-2003 13:08:50 MDT Accessibility, Privacy, and other policies and notices |