Searching for the Holy Grail of scientific hydrology: Q t =( S, R, Δt ) A as closure

By Keith Beven. 2006

203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract. Representative Elementary Watershed concepts provide a useful scale-independent framework for the representation of hydrological processes. The balance equations that underlie the concepts, however, require the definition of boundary flux closures that should be expected to be scale dependent. The relationship between internal state variables of an REW element and the boundary fluxes will be nonlinear, hysteretic and scale-dependent and may depend on the extremes of the heterogeneities within the REW. Because of the nonlinearities involved, simple averaging of local scale flux relationships are unlikely to produce an adequate decription of the closure problem at the REW scale. Hysteresis in the dynamic response is demonstrated for some small experimental catchments and it is suggested that at least some of this hysteresis can be represented by the use of simple transfer functions. The search for appropriate closure schemes is the second most important problem in hydrology of the 21st Century (the most important is providing the techniques to measure integrated fluxes and storages at useful scales). The closure problem is a scientific Holy Grail: worth searching for even if a general solution might ultimate prove impossible to find.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ef02ee767d2638dcbf2317ec1d3c1c340e41ff77

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Citations in the corpus

HESS Opinions : The complementary merits of competing modelling philosophies in hydrology (2017, background): “These two issues are linked and exacerbated by the problem that the higher the spatial resolution of the model domain, the higher the number of exchange fluxes (i.e. boundary fluxes; Beven, 2006a) between individual adjacent modelling units in the model.”
Towards a comprehensive assessment of model structural adequacy (2012, background): “While innovative solutions have been proposed to derive model equations directly at the spatial scale of interest [Reggiani et al., 1998, 1999], their general applicability has 7 of 16 yet to be determined, and much uncertainty regarding this issue remains [Beven, 2006].”
Macropores and water flow in soils revisited (2013, background): “This is not a new insight, it has been known for decades [e.g., Dagan and Bresler, 1983], but with very little effect on modeling practice [see discussion in Beven, 1989, 2001, 2006, 2012].”
What Role Does Hydrological Science Play in the Age of Machine Learning? (2020, background): “Beven’s (1987) view of hydrologic theory is compelling 259 in the sense that it would be preferable to have a theory of watersheds that is itself an 260 aggregate-type theory, since at least a significant portion of the variability and complex261 ity in watershed behaviors are due to both landscape ”
What makes Darwinian hydrology "Darwinian"? Asking a different kind of question about landscapes (2014, background): “…et al., 2011; Cullis et al., 2012) as a response to a sense of crisis within the hydrologic community (Sivapalan, 2003, 2005; Bloschl and Zehe, 2005; Beven, 2006; Kirchner, 2006; Newman et al., 2006; McDonnell et al., 2007; Wagener et al., 2010; King and Caylor, 2011; Kumar, 2011; Sivapalan et…”
The evolution of process-based hydrologic models: Historical challenges and the collective quest for physical realism. (2017, unknown): “…challenge addressed by Eric F. Wood is the problem of scaling, or closure [Wood et al. 1988; Blöschl and Sivapalan 1995; Reggiani et al. 2001; Beven 2006], i.e., how best to represent the influence of small-scale heterogeneities on large-scale fluxes, and how best to represent interactions…”