Predicting Water, Sediment and Nutrient Flux Dynamics to Global Oceans with a Spatially and Temporally Explicit Modeling Framework
Abstract
Water, sediment, nutrient and carbon fluxes along river networks have undergone considerable alterations in response to anthropogenic and climatic changes, with significant consequences to infrastructure, agriculture, water security, ecology and geomorphology worldwide. However, in a global setting, these changes in fluvial fluxes and their spatial and temporal characteristics are poorly constrained, due to the limited availability of continuous and long-term observations. Numerical models provide a pathway for alleviating this gap in observational data, offer a framework for developing and testing scientific hypotheses, and can be used as predictive tools. We present the WBMsed model, a spatially and temporally explicit global riverine model. WBMsed estimates water, sediment, nutrient and carbon fluxes at relatively high spatial and temporal resolutions (6 arc-min and daily). The model is used here to study the effect of anthropogenic activity on riverine fluxes to global oceans.
- Publication:
-
American Geophysical Union, Ocean Sciences Meeting
- Pub Date:
- February 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUOSEC53B..03C
- Keywords:
-
- 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1655 Water cycles;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 4845 Nutrients and nutrient cycling;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICALDE: 4217 Coastal processes;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL