Global patterns in observed hydrologic processes

McMillan, Hilary; Araki, Ryoko; Bolotin, Lauren; Kim, Dong-Hyun; Coxon, Gemma; Clark, Martyn; Seibert, Jan

doi:10.1038/s44221-025-00407-w

i

Global patterns in observed hydrologic processes

2025
By McMillan, Hilary ; Araki, Ryoko ; Bolotin, Lauren ; ...

Select the Download button to view the document

Please click the download button to view the document.

Details

Journal Title:

Nature Water
Personal Author:

McMillan, Hilary ; Araki, Ryoko ; Bolotin, Lauren ; Kim, Dong-Hyun ; Coxon, Gemma ; Clark, Martyn ; Seibert, Jan
NOAA Program & Office:

NWS (National Weather Service) ; CIROH (Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology)
Description:

To manage water resources and forecast river flows, hydrologists seek to understand how water moves from precipitation, through watersheds, into river channels. However, we lack fundamental information on the spatial distribution and physical controls on global hydrologic processes. This information is needed to provide theoretical support for large-domain model simulations. Here, to address this issue, we present a global, searchable database of 400 research watersheds with published descriptions of dominant hydrologic flow pathways. This knowledge synthesis approach leverages decades of grant funding, fieldwork effort and local expertise. We use the database to test longstanding hypotheses about the roles of climate, biomes and landforms in controlling hydrologic processes. We show that aridity predicts the depth of water flow pathways and that terrain and biomes predict the prevalence of lateral flow pathways. These new data and search capabilities support efficient hypothesis testing to investigate emergent patterns that relate landscape organization to hydrologic function.
Source:

Nature Water, 3(4), 497-506
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-025-00407-w
ISSN:

2731-6084
Format:

PDF
Publisher:

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Document Type:

Journal Article
Funding:

Grant no. NA22NWS4320003
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Rights Information:

CC BY
Compliance:

Submitted
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha-512:07f6b511dfbc8ee708e221cd7a4a0393b76b9677617c534659d3ce11a70184438760a5561a739aeccf7799adcbcee455e91c4bc2f2951ad752225da516a422f2
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/72803/noaa_72803_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 8.81 MB ]

ON THIS PAGE

Details

The NOAA IR serves as an archival repository of NOAA-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by NOAA or funded partners. As a repository, the NOAA IR retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.

BACK TO TOP