Terrestrial Hydrology and Climate Studies Using EOS-Era Data

Principal Investigator: Dr. Dubayah

The goal of the research is a greater understanding of the seasonal, annual and interannual variability of water and energy cycles at continental-to-global scales, and in doing so, a greater understanding the role of the terrestrial hydrosphere-biosphere in the earth’s climate system.  This goal addresses a central EOS science objective for terrestrial hydrology and ecology and in the Global Water and Energy Cycle (GWEC) element in the Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) Research Implementation Plan.  There is an extensive body of research over the last 30 years to support the contention that land surface processes control local climate through the partitioning of precipitation and incoming radiation into their budget components.  What is not well understood are the mean values and variability of the water and energy budget terms over a range of temporal and continental-to-global spatial scales, how the coupling between the land and atmosphere varies seasonally and with land surface state, and how such coupling influences weather and climate.  The inherent research strategy for EOS and ESE for investigating these issues is through process-based, terrestrial water and energy balance models.  A central premise of the project is that continental-to-global scale fields of water and energy flux and storage terms, sufficient for the science objectives of EOS and ESE, can be estimated through a combination of process-based terrestrial hydrological modeling and remote sensing inputs.