Focus Area Groups

Focus Areas Detail

Hydrological Change and Climate

(Leader: Gerardo Benito; benito@ccma.csic.es)

Objective
This very large area can develop successfully from the extensive research achieved by GLOCOPH 1991-2007, by focusing initially on the effects of past climate and environmental changes on both the hydrological cycle and on river catchment dynamics. This focus area aims to bring together scientists working on a diversity of research themes which relate to different aspects of the hydrological cycle, including rivers, lakes, and groundwater systems, at all temporal and spatial scales, but giving special emphasis to late Quaternary change at terrestrial sites, to analyse both rapid changes (decades to centuries) and long-term (centuries to millennia) changes. A major research theme will be based on sedimentary records and related techniques (isotopic composition, mineralogical analysis, geochronology), but links with other analytical records will be encouraged (e.g. documentary archives, archaeological, dendrochronological and botanic evidence).

This requires specific aims for 2007-2011 to be:

1. Extending knowledge of how past hydrological changes/global change in the past can illuminate future scenarios, employing databases as appropriate;
2. Using results of global change modeling at a variety of temporal and spatial scales to investigate how anthropogenic climate change will affect fluvial catchments;
3. Investigating how specific land use changes are affecting fluvial and lake catchments in different climatic contexts.
4. To further develop new proxies and methods for the quantitative estimation of past hydrological change that can be input to and tested against Global and Regional Climate models.
5. To foster links among climate, hydrological and environmental changes by means of establishing close relationships among continuous terrestrial records on proxy climate (U series on speleothems and travertines etc), high resolution marine-core and ice-core records, and closely age-spaced data from other terrestrial material (rivers, lakes glacial detritus, soils). This requires a close interaction of terrestrial groups with the up-dated technologies for finely resolving chronology and the associated environmental changes (luminescence, accelerator 14C, U series, AAR, geochemical mass spectrometry.

Specific targets for 2007-2011 will be:

1. To compile a list of participating researchers, utilizing and extending the GLOCOPH researcher data base and to further publicize its availability.
2. To organize an international meeting to be held in Israel between October 25th and November, 3rd 2009, with the theme of “Hydrological responses to Past Global Changes”.
3. To seek funding for an initial workshop to refine the research proposal prior to the international conference in 2009 (including an application to INQUA).
4. To establish a core group of researchers to act as a steering committee: Gerardo Benito (Spain), Juergen Herget (Germany), Ken Gregory (UK), Vic Baker (USA), Tony Brown (UK), Yehouda Enzel (Israel), Mark Macklin (UK), Gerald Nanson (Australia), Vishwas Kale (India), Jef Vanderberghe (The Netherlands), Edgardo Latrubesse (Argentina).
5. To propose and arrange publication of papers arising from the international meeting in 2009; this must be organized in advance of the meeting to ensure publication in advance of 2011.
6. To establish contacts with other relevant groups, to demonstrate awareness of other research programmes underway (e.g. PAGES), not only to avoid overlap but also to explore bases for research collaboration

Addresses of Steering Committee Members:

Gerardo Benito (Focus Area Leader)
Environmental Science Centre-Spanish Council for Research
Serrano 115 bis
28006 Madrid, SPAIN
benito@ccma.csic.es

Juergen Herget (Secretary)
Department of Geography
University of Bonn
Meckenheimer Allee 166
D-53115 Bonn, GERMANY
herget@giub.uni-bonn.de

Vic Baker
Department of Hydrology and Water Resources
J.W. Harshbarger Building, Room 246
The University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721-0011 USA
baker@hwr.arizona.edu

Tony Brown
Department of Geography
University of Southampton
Highfield Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Tony.Brown@soton.ac.uk

Yehouda Enzel
Prof Yehouda Enzel
Institute of Earth Sciences
Givat Ram Campus
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem 91904, ISRAEL
yenzel@vms.huji.ac.il

Ken Gregory
University of Southampton
Woolmer View
9 Poltimore Road
Guildford, Surrey
GU2 7PT, UK
k.j.gregory@ntlworld.com

Vishwas Kale
Department of Geography
University of Pune
Pune 411 007, INDIA
vskale@unipune.ernet.in OR vskale.unipune@gmail.com

Edgardo Latrubesse
Instituto de Geomorfologia y Suelos-IGS
Universidad Nacional de La Plata
La Plata, ARGENTINA
latrubesse@igs.edu.ar

Mark Macklin
Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences,
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Ceredigion,
SY23 3DB, UK
mvm@aber.ac.uk

Gerald Nanson
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Wollongong
New South Wales, 2522
AUSTRALIA
gnanson@uow.edu.au

Jef Vandenberghe
Faculty of Earth Sciences
Free University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
jef.vandenberghe@falw.vu.nl