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Dear Visitor,

Welcome to the pages of the Earth Surface Hydrology group at Utrecht University. Our group was established in 2002. We are part of the Department of Physical Geography , one of the four departments of the Faculty of Geosciences.

Earth Surface Hydrology is concerned with the study of hydrological processes near and on the earth surface. It focuses on the flow of water, nutrients and energy between the earth surface and the subsoil and between the earth surface and the atmosphere. It aims to quantify how rainfall is portioned into infiltration, evaporation and runoff, and how nutrients in the soil and the earth surface are distributed through the landscape through surface runoff and groundwater flow.

Our research focuses on three major themes: 1) Large-scale hydrology, including the global hydrological model PCR-GLOBWB (link to global hydrology site); 2) Ecohydrology and eco-geomorphology; 3) Geocomputation.  Check out our Research pages for more information.

We are responsible for two MSc programs: Earth Surface and Water, in particular the track Hydrology and a new program called Water Science and Management. Look under Education to find out more about courses taught by our group.

Thank you for your interest,

 

Marc Bierkens
Chair in Earth Surface Hydrology

PCR-GLOBWB and high impact papers: Yoshi and Niko strike again!

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Former members of our group Yoshihide Wada and Niko Wanders were involved in new high impact publications using PCR-GLOBWB:

Yoshi was co-author on a paper in Nature assessing how groundwater depletion is embedded in international food trade.  See this link for a nice BBC news item.

Both Niko and Yoshi were involved in a GRL paper looking how water management can both mitigate and intensify hydrological drought. The PNAS website had a nice item about this work.

 

 

Global two-layer transient groundwater model published (and more)

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We are happy to announce that Inge de Graaf published a paper about our newly-developed global two-layer transient groundwater model. This version is coupled one-way with the global hydrology and water resources model PCR-GLOBWB. A newer version also has a two-way (at time-step) coupling with PCR-GLOBWB and will be reported on shortly. You can find the paper here!

Furthermore, Yoshihide Wada (vice-director Water at IIASA and senior research associate at UU) and colleagues published a new paper in Nature Geoscience in which they show from analyses of satellite and local well data spanning the past decade that long-term changes in monsoon precipitation are driving groundwater storage variability in most parts of India either directly by changing recharge or indirectly by changing abstraction.

Nature Climate Change: Global drivers of future flood risk

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Worldwide economic losses from river flooding could increase 20-fold by the end of the 21st century if no further actions on flood risk reduction are taken. Over 70% of this increase can be attributed to economic growth in flood prone areas

This follows from a recent study by a Dutch consortium that includes our research group.

See the study in Nature Climate Change!

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-climate-main-prone-areas.html#jCp

 

This is where you’ll find us at AGU 2015!

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These are our contributions at AGU 2015

H13R-01 Development of human impact modeling in global hydrology
Monday, 14 December 2015  13:40 – 13:55 Moscone West – 3011
Marc Bierkens and Yoshihide Wada

H13R-06 eWaterCycle: Recent progress in a global operational hydrological forecasting model
Monday, 14 December 2015  14:55 – 15:10 Moscone West – 3011
Nick Van De Giesen, Edwin Sutanudjaja, Marc Bierkens, Niels Drost, Rolf Hut

H13R-08 Limits to Global Groundwater Consumption
Inge de Graaf et al.
Monday, 14 December 2015  15:25 – 15:40 Moscone West – 3011

H23E-1622 The HyperHydro (H^2) experiment for comparing different large-scale models at various resolutions
Edwin Sutanudjaja et al.
Tuesday, 15 December 2015  13:40 – 18:00 Moscone South – Poster Hall

GC32B-05 Reducing water scarcity possible by 2050: Linking global assessments to policy dimensions
Yoshihide Wada et al.
Wednesday, 16 December 2015  11:20 – 11:35 Moscone West – 3001

H43J-04 Improved Large-Scale Inundation Modelling by 1D-2D Coupling and Consideration of Hydrologic and Hydrodynamic Processes – a Case Study in the Amazon
Jannis Hoch et al.
Thursday, 17 December 2015  14:25 – 14:40 Moscone West – 3020

H43E-1545 Simulating the impact of past and future land cover and climate change on the global hydrological system using PCR-GLOBWB
Joyce Bosmans et al.

Thursday, 17 December 2015  13:40 – 18:00 Moscone South – Poster Hall
G52A-08 A century-long simulation of terrestrial water storage change and its contribution to global sea-level
Marc Bierkens et al.
Friday, 18 December 2015  12:05 – 12:20 Moscone West – 2002

H53L-04 Improved Large-Scale Hydrological Modelling Through The Assimilation Of Streamflow And Downscaled Satellite Soil Moisture Observations
Patricia Lopez-Lopez et al.
Friday, 18 December 2015  14:25 – 14:40 Moscone West – 3022

And Yoshi Wada’s many co-operative papers: https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm15/meetingapp.cgi/Person/90990

And Niko Wanders (former PhD) seeding his many oats:
https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm15/meetingapp.cgi/Person/61864