H11 - Historic Hydrologic Synthesis: Quantifying the Past to Understand the Future (AGU Fall Meeting, 15-19 December 2008)
Please consider submitting your AGU abstract to H11 - Historic Hydrologic Synthesis: Quantifying the Past to Understand the Future. We are planning an exciting, cross-cutting session and particularly encourage presentations on research at the intersection of historical hydrology and geomorphology or biogeochemistry. Please feel free to contact the conveners with questions. Description: Quantifying and evaluating future hydrologic change requires an integration of process across a range of time scales. In the present and recent past, our understanding of hydrology has been advanced by the ability to measure hydrologic variables at high frequencies, but our ability to understand hydrologic changes and longer-term (i.e. intergenerational) processes over the past several hundred years is rudimentary at best. While construction of hydrologic models for historic periods challenges our conventional thinking due to a lack of data for calibration, these periods remain our best repository of information on slower oscillations in our hydrologic systems and deserve further attention. Quantification of historical hydrologic, sediment, and biogeochemical cycling relies on proxies and synthetic bodies of evidence, rather than controlled experimental systems. This session will focus on emerging work synthesizing historic hydrologic information within the late- Holocene and across spatial scales. In particular, we invite presentations addressing or raising the important questions arising from synthetic work, such as: Are pre-European settlement conditions in the United States appropriate or desirable design criteria for contemporary hydrologic management?; Have historical decisions produced system legacies that may hinder water management?; Are our measures of hydrologic resilience effective and meaningful when viewed with historical context? Jennifer Arrigo East Carolina University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Daniel Bain University of Pittsburgh [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Green University of New Hampshire [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brian Pellerin US Geological Survey [EMAIL PROTECTED]
