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Process scales in catchment science: a new synthesis
Citation:
Price, Katie, P. Dennedy-Frank, C. Harman, Tom Purucker, R. Jackson, AND R. Sidle. Process scales in catchment science: a new synthesis. Presented at AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 08 - 13, 2013.
Impact/Purpose:
Presented at AGU Fall Meeting 2013
Description:
Concerns surrounding data resolution, choice of spatial and temporal scales in research design, and problems with extrapolation of processes across spatial and temporal scales differ greatly between scientific process-elucidation research and scenario exploration for watershed management and policy. This is true whether the underlying watershed models are statistical or process-based. Watershed scientists understand that we lack the knowledge and tools to extrapolate this detailed understanding from the smallest scales of observations to larger, more heterogeneous watershed systems over larger timescales, while it is at these larger scales where our most pressing questions of water availability lie, creating a conundrum that has stymied watershed science for several decades. As a scientific community, catchment scientists clearly understand the potential problems associated with up- and down-scaling in hydrology and related processes, but we suggest that the community lacks a cohesive perspective on how to deal with these issues. Having been nearly two decades since the last major review of this topic, we offer a new synthesis on the topic of scaling in catchment science with the results of four main objectives: 1) to identify a community definition of management and policy scales and their relationship to catchment process scales, 2) to synthesize legacy perspectives on scaling in hydrology, 3) to identify known scale-dependent and scale-invariant catchment processes , and 4) to suggest methods and conceptualizations for removal of scaling barriers in future research. Suggested approaches will incorporate trans-disciplinary perspectives on scaling, and will cover: thresholds for scale-dependence, the role of the representative elementary watershed in conceptualizing scaling, existing and potential use of scaling algorithms, strengths and weaknesses of cross-scale process-based modeling, and statistical approaches for maximizing observed information and characterizing uncertainty in cross-scale applications.
