Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Water
Science and Application Series, Volume 3.Land surface hydrology
integrates various physical, chemical and biological processes that
occur above, on, and below the surface of the Earth. As a result,
it is critical to accurately account for land surface processes
within predictive models of hydrology, meteorology, and
climate.
One of our main difficulties, however, concerns the broad range
of spatial and temporal scales that characterize land surface
hydrological processes. For example, we determine infiltration by
pore scale physics, while soil hydraulic conductivity remains a
field scale property. Photosynthesis, respiration, and
transpiration occur at the leaf scale. Runoff is a catchment scale
process, and the variability of groundwater storage is a regional
scale issue. Turbulence in land-atmosphere exchanges of heat,
moisture, and momentum occur on the order of seconds to minutes,
while variations in land surface and air temperatures occur much
more gradually: on the order of hours. The persistence of floods
and droughts is seasonal to annual, and so is the effect of El Nino
on regional hydrology. Long-term climate effects occur much more
slowly, on the order of years to decades.
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