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EESA Scientists Develop New Model to Study Watershed Flow and Chemical Transport3 min read

by Julie Bobyock on September 27, 2022

Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

Extreme weather, floods, drought, and land-use change are impacting nutrient, element, and water cycling within mountainous watersheds that provide 60-90 percent of the world’s freshwater. Changes in precipitation and snowmelt influence the quantity and timing of water in streams and rivers. However, these changes can also affect water quality because they affect the fate and transport of chemicals. Ecosystem processes occurring above and below-ground such as evaporation, infiltration, runoff or rock weathering interact in such a way that make water quantity and quality closely linked. Predicting how these processes can change with shifting weather and climate conditions is essential to a water-secure future–especially in regions like the Upper Colorado River Basin, which provides water for more than 40 million people. 

Berkeley Lab scientists Zexuan Xu and Sergi Molins, with the Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (SFA) and IDEAS-Watershed project teams, recently led two studies published by the American Geophysical Union to evaluate water flow and solute fate and transport in watersheds, a challenging area of study since a holistic watershed understanding requires a consideration of the complex interacting parts of the watershed, from the bedrock to the tree canopy. 

“While many modeling tools are available to study water quantity in watersheds,” explained Zu, “there is still a lack of models that also consider processes affecting water quality.”

a) Mountainous watershed response to changing rain and snow involves many processes that occur across scales and subsystems like hillslopes and bedrock. (Hubbard et al., 2018). b) Comparison between observed and simulated Concentration-Discharge responses at the watershed outlet. Illustration credit: Diana Swantek

With this new model, which ties water quantity and quality, we are making a qualitative step forward in our ability to understand and predict changes in solute concentrations associated with future weather extremes,” Molins added. “Also, with advancements in high performance computing which enables increasing model complexity, we’re able to predict differences in watershed outputs between dry and wet years.” 

The scientists developed a first-of-its-kind model that simulates the movement of chemical solutes in both surface and groundwater, while also accounting for how geochemical reactions affect the amount of these solutes. The researchers also analyzed how climate and weather extremes influenced the relationship of the volume of water and the concentration of chemicals, or the Concentration-Discharge relationship, to predict how exports from the Upper Colorado River Basin may influence water quality in downstream water bodies. 

This study’s results show that different environmental factors, such as topography, stream water flow and groundwater work together under changing weather and climate conditions to influence downstream water volume and quality, introducing a newly detailed understanding of watershed function under climate change. They also found that mineral compositions across depth results in different water quality in periods of wet and dry conditions. As environmental disturbances such as wildfires and drought increase, it’s important that we have better tools to understand their effect on these systems in order to predict downstream freshwater resources that we rely on will be impacted. 

The Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (SFA) and IDEAS-Watershed projects are supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science’s Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program. Learn more about EESA’s watershed function research here.

News & Events

EESA Scientists Investigate How Tropical Soil Microbes Might Respond to Future Droughts2 min read

March 14, 2023

As the most biologically diverse terrestrial ecosystems on Earth, tropical rainforests are just as critical to sustaining environmental and human systems as they are beautiful. Their unique climate with high temperatures, humidity, and precipitation promotes high primary productivity, which offsets high respiration, resulting in these ecosystems being one of the largest carbon sinks on Earth,…

Doubling Protected Lands for Biodiversity Could Require Tradeoffs With Other Land Uses, Study Finds4 min read

March 3, 2023

This article first appeared on lbl.gov. Scientists show how 30% protected land targets may not safeguard biodiversity hotspots and may negatively affect other sectors – and how data and analysis can support effective conservation and land use planning Although more than half the world’s countries have committed to protecting at least 30% of land and oceans…

Six Berkeley Lab Scientists Named AAAS Fellows6 min read

This article first appeared at lbl.gov Six researchers have been elected into the 2022 class of the American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has announced their 2022 Fellows, including six scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). This lifetime honor, which follows…

Kenichi Soga named to National Academy of Engineers1 min read

February 23, 2023

Faculty scientist Kenichi Soga was named to the National Academy of Engineering (NA), one of the highest honors that can be achieved as an American engineer. Soga is the Donald H. McLaughlin Chair in Mineral Engineering and a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and has conducted groundbreaking research from infrastructure sensing to…

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