Università degli Studi di Cagliari
Seminario del Prof. John Albertson della Duke University
09 marzo 2009
Nell’ambito del programma “Visiting professor 2008” il Prof. John Albertson della Duke University, lunedi’ 9 Marzo alle ore 12.00 presso l’aula di Idraulica del Dipartimento di Ingegneria del Territorio terra’ il seminario dal titolo
Hydrology-Vegetation Interactions Under Climate and Population Pressures:
Bridging Ecology, Turbulence, and Water Resources.
Abstract
Many of the contemporary research questions in the environmental sciences and engineering involve ever-increasing spatial and temporal scales, and intertwined features of the physical and biological sciences. One of the most clear examples of this is found in the connection between hydrology and meteorology, where plants control the energy and water exchange processes that impact so strongly the available water resources and climate. Ultimately, these fast processes (e.g. transpiration and photosynthesis), when integrated through time, manifest themselves as changes in the vegetation structure that then induce feedbacks on the land-atmosphere fluxes over longer time scales. In this talk we will look at the broad issue of how climate and land use changes impact water resources in semi-arid regions, including examples from sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean. Along the way, we will examine some new tools and research results related to 1) modeling the dynamics of vegetation over long time scales, and 2) how the vegetation structure controls the turbulent transport phenomena connecting hydrology and meteorology. The overall direction of this research is to provide a clear and scientifically sound view of water resources sustainability in the face of climate and population pressures.