Nandita B. Basu

The future of hydrology: An evolving science for a changing world

Human activities exert global-scale impacts on our environment with significant implications for freshwater-driven services and hazards for humans and nature. Our approach to the science of hydrology needs to significantly change so that we can understand and predict these implications. Such an adjustment is a necessary prerequisite for the development of sustainable water resource management strategies and to achieve long-term water security for people and the environment. Hydrology requires a paradigm shift in which predictions of system behavior that are beyond the range of previously observed variability or that result from significant alterations of physical (structural) system characteristics become the new norm. To achieve this shift, hydrologists must become both synthesists, observing and analyzing the system as a holistic entity, and analysts, understanding the functioning of individual system components, while operating firmly within a well-designed hypothesis testing framework. Cross-disciplinary integration must become a primary characteristic of hydrologic research, catalyzing new research and nurturing new educational models. The test of our quantitative understanding across atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and anthroposphere will necessarily lie in new approaches to benchmark our ability to predict the regional hydrologic and connected implications of environmental change. To address these challenges and to serve as a catalyst to bring about the necessary changes to hydrologic science, we call for a long-term initiative to address the regional implications of environmental change.

Nutrient loads exported from managed catchments reveal emergent biogeochemical stationarity

Complexity of heterogeneous catchments poses challenges in predicting biogeochemical responses to human alterations and stochastic hydro?climatic drivers. Human interferences and climate change may have contributed to the demise of hydrologic stationarity, but our synthesis of a large body of observational data suggests that anthropogenic impacts have also resulted in the emergence of effective biogeochemical stationarity in managed catchments. Long?term monitoring data from the Mississippi?Atchafalaya River Basin (MARB) and the Baltic Sea Drainage Basin (BSDB) reveal that inter?annual variations in loads (LT) for total?N (TN) and total?P (TP), exported from a catchment are dominantly controlled by discharge (QT) leading inevitably to temporal invariance of the annual, flow?weighted concentration, Cf = (LT/QT). Emergence of this consistent pattern across diverse managed catchments is attributed to the anthropogenic legacy of accumulated nutrient sources generating memory, similar to ubiquitously present sources for geogenic constituents that also exhibit a linear LT?QT relationship. These responses are characteristic of transport?limited systems. In contrast, in the absence of legacy sources in less?managed catchments, Cf values were highly variable and supply limited. We offer a theoretical explanation for the observed patterns at the event scale, and extend it to consider the stochastic nature of rainfall/flow patterns at annual scales. Our analysis suggests that: (1) expected inter?annual variations in LT can be robustly predicted given discharge variations arising from hydro?climatic or anthropogenic forcing, and (2) water?quality problems in receiving inland and coastal waters would persist until the accumulated storages of nutrients have been substantially depleted. The finding has notable implications on catchment management to mitigate adverse water?quality impacts, and on acceleration of global biogeochemical cycles.

Climate, soil, and vegetation controls on the temporal variability of vadose zone transport

Temporal patterns of solute transport and transformation through the vadose zone are driven by the stochastic variability of water fluxes. This is determined by the hydrologic filtering of precipitation variability into infiltration, storage, drainage, and evapotranspiration. In this work we develop a framework for examining the role of the hydrologic filtering and, in particular, the effect of evapotranspiration in determining the travel time and delivery of sorbing, reacting solutes transported through the vadose zone by stochastic rainfall events. We describe a 1-D vertical model in which solute pulses are tracked as point loads transported to depth by a series of discrete infiltration events. Numerical solutions of this model compare well to the Richards equation–based HYDRUS model for some typical cases. We then utilize existing theory of the stochastic dynamics of soil water to derive analytical and semianalytical expressions for the probability density functions (pdfs) of solute travel time and delivery. The moments of these pdfs directly relate the mean and variance of expected travel times to the water balance and show how evapotranspiration tends to reduce (and make more uncertain) the mass of a degrading solute delivered to the base of the vadose zone. The framework suggests a classification of different modes hydrologic filtering depending on hydroclimatic and landscape controls. Results suggest that variability in travel times decreases with soil depth in wet climates but increases with soil depth in dry climates. In dry climates, rare large storms can be an important mechanism for leaching to groundwater.

Integration of traditional and innovative characterization techniques for flux-based assessment of Dense Non-aqueous Phase Liquid (DNAPL) sites

Key attributes of the source zone and the expanding dissolved plume at a trichloroethene (TCE) site in Australia were evaluated using trends in groundwater monitoring data along with data from on-line volatile organic compound (VOC) samplers and passive flux meters (PFMs) deployed in selected wells. These data indicate that: (1) residual TCE source mass in the saturated zone, estimated using two innovative techniques, is small ( approximately 10 kg), which is also reflected in small source mass discharge ( approximately 3 g/day); (2) the plume is disconnecting, based on TCE concentration contours and TCE fluxes in wells along a longitudinal transect; (3) there is minimal biodegradation, based on TCE mass discharge of approximately 6 g/day at a plume control plane approximately 175 m from source, which is also consistent with aerobic geochemical conditions observed in the plume; and (4) residual TCE in the vadose zone provides episodic inputs of TCE mass to the plume during infiltration/recharge events. TCE flux data also suggest that the small residual TCE source mass is present in the low-permeability zones, thus making source treatment difficult. Our analysis, based on a synthesis of the archived data and new data, suggests that source treatment is unwarranted, and that containment of the large TCE plume (approximately 1.2 km long, approximately 0.3 km wide; 17 m deep; approximately 2000-2500 kg TCE mass) or institutional controls, along with a long-term flux monitoring program, might be necessary. The flux-based site management approach outlined in this paper provides a novel way of looking beyond the complexities of groundwater contamination in heterogeneous domains, to make intelligent and informed site decisions based on strategic measurement of the appropriate metrics.

Water cycle dynamics in a changing environment: Improving predictability through synthesis

All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses...The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had long seemed unlike... For order does not display itself of itself; if it can be said to be there at all, it is not there for the mere looking... order must be discovered and, in a deep sense, it must be created. What we see, as we see it, is mere disorder.

Stochastic modeling of nutrient losses in streams: Interactions of climatic, hydrologic, and biogeochemical controls

We present an analytical, stochastic approach for quantifying intra-annual fluctuations of in-stream nutrient losses induced by naturally variable hydrologic conditions. The relevance of the problem we address lies in the growing concern for the major environmental impacts of increasing nutrient loads from watersheds to freshwater bodies and coastal waters. Here we express the first-order nutrient loss rate constant, k(e), as a function of key biogeochemical and hydrologic controls, in particular the stream depth (h). The stage h modulates the impact of natural streamflow temporal fluctuations (induced by intermittent rainfall forcings) on the underlying biogeochemical processes and thus represents the major driver of at-a-site fluctuations of k(e). Novel expressions for the probability distribution function (pdf) of h and k(e) are derived as a function of a few eco-hydrologic, morphologic and biogeochemical parameters. The shape of such pdfs chiefly depends on the following attributes: (1) the average frequency of streamflow-producing rainfall events, lambda; (2) the inverse of mean catchment residence time, k; and (3) a stream channel shape factor, identified through the discharge rating curve exponent b. For lambda/(kb) > 1, h and k(e) have lower intra-annual variability and lower sensitivity to climatic and morphologic controls, leading to improved predictability and ease of measurement of these attributes. Moment analyses suggest that the variability of k(e), relative to that of h, is attenuated for lambda/(kb) > 1. Thus, the interplay between climate-landscape parameters and the stream shape factor b controls the temporal variability induced by stochastic rainfall forcings on stream stages and nutrient removal rates.

Biogeochemical Hotspots: Role of Small Water Bodies in Landscape Nutrient Processing

Increased loading of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from agricultural and urban intensification has led to severe degradation of inland and coastal waters. Lakes, reservoirs, and wetlands (lentic systems) retain these nutrients, thus regulating their delivery to downstream waters. While the processes controlling N and P retention are relatively well-known, there is a lack of quantitative understanding of how these processes manifest across spatial scales. We synthesized data from 600 lentic systems around the world to gain insight into the relationship between hydrologic and biogeochemical controls on nutrient retention. Our results indicate that the first-order reaction rate constant, k [T−1], is inversely proportional to the hydraulic residence time, τ [T], across 6 orders of magnitude in residence time for total N, total P, nitrate, and phosphate. We hypothesized that the consistency of the relationship points to a strong hydrologic control on biogeochemical processing, and validated our hypothesis using a sediment-water model that links major nutrient removal processes with system size. Finally, the k-τ relationships were upscaled to the landscape scale using a wetland size-frequency distribution. Results suggest that small wetlands play a disproportionately large role in landscape-scale nutrient processing—50% of nitrogen removal occurs in wetlands smaller than 102.5 m2 in our example. Thus, given the same loss in wetland area, the nutrient retention potential lost is greater when smaller wetlands are preferentially lost from the landscape. Our study highlights the need for a stronger focus on small lentic systems as major nutrient sinks in the landscape.

Dominant controls on pesticide transport from tile to catchment scale: Lessons from a minimalist model

This paper proposes a minimalist modeling approach for characterizing pesticide concentrations in runoff from agricultural catchments across spatial scales. The model proposed is of an intermediate level of complexity between traditional chromatographic separation models and the more complex dual-domain models. Parsimony in the model is achieved by assuming stationarity of catchment travel time distributions and by coupling a dual-domain source zone model that describes near-surface pesticide dynamics with the mass response function (MRF) approach, which describes catchment-scale solute transport. The model is evaluated by comparing predicted atrazine concentrations with measured values over a 5 yr period at two spatial scales (tile drain: 3-5 ha; river station : 69 km(2)) within an intensively managed agricultural catchment in Illinois, United States. Pesticide dynamics within the source zone provided the strongest control on leaching. Two parameters were calibrated at the tile scale, Gamma, which describes partitioning in the dual-domain surficial source zone, and k(e), which describes the mass transfer rate constant between the two domains. The initial peak of concentration was found to be sensitive to Gamma, while the later peaks were sensitive to k(e). The calibrated parameters at the tile stations were used to predict atrazine dynamics at the river station. Prediction errors are examined and related to the lack of detailed information about anthropogenic forcings across scales (e. g., land-use or soil/crop management practices).

A diagnostic approach to constraining flow partitioning in hydrologic models using a multiobjective optimization framework

© American Geophysical Union: Shafii, M., Basu, N., Craig, J. R., Schiff, S. L., & Van Cappellen, P. (2017). A diagnostic approach to constraining flow partitioning in hydrologic models using a multiobjective optimization framework. Water Resources Research, 53(4), 3279–3301. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016WR019736

Correction to “Relative dominance of hydrologic versus biogeochemical factors on solute export across impact gradients”

[1] Many processes lead to variability of catchment concentration‐discharge relationships, but exports of geogenic (weathering derived) solutes and nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus species) from agricultural basins display relatively constant concentrations despite large variations in streamflow. These “chemostatic” responses are hypothesized to arise when a large mass store, the parent material for geogenics or chemically recalcitrant legacies of fertilization in agricultural catchments, buffers concentration variability. This hypothesis implies that (1) chemostatic behavior should be a general response to elevated external inputs to a catchment and (2) chemostatic behavior should be predictable from theory. Data‐ and model‐based analyses were used to explore these hypotheses. We evaluated concentration variability relative to discharge (expressed as the ratio of the coefficients of variation of concentration and flow, or CVC /CVQ) across a gradient of increasing exported load, as a proxy for an external impact gradient. The CVC /CVQ of multiple solutes declined with increasing exported load. Exceptions included the geogenic solutes, which showed chemostatic responses for all sites, phosphorus, and some nitrogen species. Nitrate showed a suggestive pattern in CVC /CVQ with export, but further data are needed to confirm its generality. A simple model of runoff generation and solute export suggested that the decline in CVC /CVQ arises if the internal mass store is distributed homogeneously in space and there is sufficient time for mass transfer to reach steady state between runoff events. Export from catchments may become more predictable in impacted watersheds, simplifying water quality prediction but inducing strong hysteresis in recovery and making restoration efforts challenging.