Scale Issues in Hydrology in the Anthropocene

ALL ARE WELCOME

Hydrological processes occur at a wide range of scales,from unsaturated flow in a one-metre soil profile to floodsin river systems of millions of square kilometres; fromflash floods of a few minutes duration to flow in aquifersover hundreds of years. Hydrological processes spanabout eight orders of magnitude in space and time.Precipitation is one of the major forcings driving thehydrological cycle. Precipitation phenomena range fromcells (associated with cumulus convection) at scales of afew kms and several minutes, to synoptic areas(associated with frontal systems) at scales of about athousand km and more than a day. Many hydrologicalprocesses operate - in response to precipitation - atsimilar length scales, but the time-scales are delayed. Inrecent times, it is recognised that these processes areimpacted by intense human interventions at differentscales. The land surface processes, for example, that areinfluenced by human activities, are known to significantlyalter the hydrologic regimes at a range of space-timescales. The current geologic age – rightly termed theAnthropocene, with intense human signatures in mostnatural processes, but most significantly on thehydrologic processes – has imparted a great challenge tothe hydrologists towards not just the processunderstanding at different scales but also on evolvingsustainable water resource management strategies.Quantifying the isolated and integrated impacts ofdifferent dimensions of human activities on hydrologyalong with the associated uncertainties is challenging.This presentation provides an overview of recent workcarried out in this direction, in India. Impacts of land usechange, climate change and smaller scale humaninterventions on the river basin hydrology, agriculturaldemands, urban and riverine floods and droughts arediscussed.

Prof. P P Mujumdar is currently serving as theChairman, Interdisciplinary Centre for WaterResearch, at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc),Bengaluru. His area of specialization is Hydrologyand Water Resources with a focus on climatechange impacts on hydrology/water resources,downscaling of GCM simulations, urban flooding anduncertainty modeling. His recent researchcontributions include: innovative use ofnonparametric probability distributions andevidence theory towards offsetting uncertainties inhydrological projections under climate changescenarios; methodological improvements tosegregate the effects of land use change andclimate change on hydrological regimes;explorations of non-stationarity in the occurrencesof floods and droughts; and. uncertaintyquantification in urban precipitation extremes. He isa recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Medal ofthe European Geosciences Union (EGU), theDistinguished Visiting Fellowship of the RoyalAcademy of Engineering, UK and the Indian NationalHydrology Lecture Award of CSIR-NGRI. He is a J CBose National Fellow and is a Fellow of IndianNational Academy of Engineering (INAE), IndianAcademy of Sciences (IASc) and Indian NationalScience Academy (INSA).

Pradeep MujumdarProfessor and Chairman, Interdisciplinary Centre for Water Research (ICWaR), IISc Bengaluru

A L L A R E W E L C O M E

Nov 22, Friday, 2019New Lecture Hall

5:15 PM

IISER Pune Institute Colloquium 2019

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