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How much water will we have by the end of summer? Progress and pitfalls along the path to prediction.

Abstract

Seasonally dry climates exhibit annual swings in precipitation that strongly influence surface water availability. Reliable prediction and characterization of these resources are important for ecosystems and society, yet few hydrologic models and methods have been tailored to cope with the complexities of a non-stationary climate.

This dissertation focuses on techniques to improve prediction and analysis of soil moisture, hillslope flow generation, and catchment scale flows in seasonally dry climates. It evaluates the performance of three new models for these hydrologic variables, which span the relevant range of scales for conservation and management purposes. It examines in fine detail a common mathematical model for the streamflow recession, the power law differential equation dq/dt = -aq^b, which is one of the simplest and most broadly used functions to describe the draining of a catchment. For seasonally dry watersheds that spend much of the year in a state of recession, the power law model is an important tool for streamflow modeling and analysis. The work here assesses some of the mathematical challenges associ- ated with application of the power law recession model, and quantifies uncertainty associated with determination of the power law parameters, a and b.

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