IISER Pune is happy to announce:

Twelfth Institute colloquium:

Scale Issues in Hydrology in the Anthropocene

Prof Pradeep P Mujumdar, IISc Bengaulru

(See flyer)

Date: Friday, November 22, 2019

Time: 5:15 pm

Abstract: 

Hydrological processes occur at a wide range of scales, from unsaturated flow in a one-meter soil profile to floods in river systems of millions of square kilometers; from flash floods of a few minutes duration to flow in aquifers over hundreds of years. Hydrological processes span about eight orders of magnitude in space and time.  Precipitation is one of the major forcings driving the hydrological cycle. Precipitation phenomena range from cells (associated with cumulus convection) at scales of a few km and several minutes, to synoptic areas (associated with frontal systems) at scales of about a thousand km and more than a day. Many hydrological processes operate - in response to precipitation - at similar length scales, but the time-scales are delayed. In recent times, it is recognized that these processes are impacted by intense human interventions at different scales. The land surface processes, for example, that are influenced by human activities, are known to significantly alter the hydrologic regimes at a range of space-time scales. The current geologic age – rightly termed the Anthropocene, with intense human signatures in most natural processes, but most significantly on the hydrologic processes – has imparted a great challenge to the hydrologists towards not just the process understanding at different scales but also on evolving sustainable water resource management strategies.

Quantifying the isolated and integrated impacts of different dimensions of human activities on hydrology along with the associated uncertainties is challenging. This presentation provides an overview of recent work carried out in this direction, in India. Impacts of land-use change. climate change and smaller-scale human interventions on the river basin hydrology, agricultural demands, urban and riverine floods, and droughts are discussed.