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Climate change effects on watershed hydrological and biogeochemical processes
Citation:
Abdelnour, A., S. Patil, M. Stieglitz, Bob Mckane, AND F. Pan. Climate change effects on watershed hydrological and biogeochemical processes. Presented at Oregon State Seminar Series: Updates from the Corvallis Climate Change Impacts Community, November 14, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
This is an invited oral presentation at Oregon State University on November 14, 2012. My presentation is part of OSU’s Department of Biological & Ecological Engineering fall seminar series, “Updates from the Corvallis Climate Change Impacts Community”. Participation in this seminar series provides an opportunity to describe the EPA Western Ecology Division’s research on watershed modeling and climate change and exchange ideas with other interested scientists in the local community.
Description:
Projected changes in climate are widely expected to alter watershed processes. However, the extent of these changes is difficult to predict because complex interactions among affected hydrological and biogeochemical processes will likely play out over many decades and spatial scales. In this seminar we describe a new eco-hydrological model, Visualizing Ecosystems for Land Management Assessments (VELMA) and its application to the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a 64 km2 headwater basin and Long Term Ecological Research site in the western Oregon Cascade Range. We forced the model using daily projected temperature and precipitation for best case, worst case and middle-of-the-road climate change scenarios. Simulation results suggest that the effects of warmer and wetter winters combined with drier and hotter summers will result in lower winter snow accumulation, earlier spring snowmelt, higher winter streamflow, and lower summer streamflow and soil moisture. Our results also suggest that warmer air temperatures will enhance soil microbial activity and lengthen the growing season, which in turn will lead to higher plant and soil carbon accumulation and increased dissolved C and N losses from the terrestrial system to the stream and atmosphere. We conclude with a discussion of uncertainties in these model results, and suggest some long-term monitoring and experimental approaches that may help address these uncertainties.
