Hillslope hydrology in global change research and Earth System Modeling

Earth System Models (ESMs) are essential tools for understanding and predicting global change, but they cannot explicitly resolve hillslope-scale terrain structures that fundamentally organize water, energy, and biogeochemical stores and fluxes at subgrid scales. Here we bring together hydrologists, Critical Zone scientists, and ESM developers, to explore how hillslope structures may modulate ESM grid-level water, energy, and biogeochemical fluxes. In contrast to the one-dimensional (1-D), 2- to 3-m deep, and free-draining soil hydrology in most ESM land models, we hypothesize that 3-D, lateral ridge-to-valley flow through shallow and deep paths and insolation contrasts between sunny and shady slopes are the top two globally quantifiable organizers of water and energy (and vegetation) within an ESM grid cell. We hypothesize that these two processes are likely to impact ESM predictions where (and when) water and/or energy are limiting. We further hypothesize that, if implemented in ESM land models, these processes will increase simulated continental water storage and residence time, buffering terrestrial ecosystems against seasonal and interannual droughts. We explore efficient ways to capture these mechanisms in ESMs and identify critical knowledge gaps preventing us from scaling up hillslope to global processes. One such gap is our extremely limited knowledge of the subsurface, where water is stored (supporting vegetation) and released to stream baseflow (supporting aquatic ecosystems). We conclude with a set of organizing hypotheses and a call for global syntheses activities and model experiments to assess the impact of hillslope hydrology on global change predictions.

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Related Dataset #1 : Hydrologic Derivatives for Modeling and Applications (HDMA) Data

Related Dataset #2 : World Stress Map Database Release 2016
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Copyright 2019 American Geophysical Union.
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Author Fan, Y.
Clark, Martyn
Lawrence, David M.
Swenson, Sean
Band, L. E.
Brantley, S. L.
Brooks, P. D.
Dietrich, W. E.
Flores, A.
Grant, G.
Kirchner, J. W.
Mackay, D. S.
McDonnell, J. J.
Milly, P. C. D.
Sullivan, P. L.
Tague, C.
Ajami, H.
Chaney, N.
Hartmann, A.
Hazenberg, P.
McNamara, J.
Pelletier, J.
Perket, J.
Rouholahnejad‐Freund, E.
Wagener, T.
Zeng, X.
Beighley, E.
Buzan, J.
Huang, M.
Livneh, B.
Mohanty, B. P.
Nijssen, B.
Safeeq, M.
Shen, C.
Verseveld, W.
Volk, J.
Yamazaki, D.
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2019-02-01T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
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Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2023-08-18T18:26:46.022372
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:22448
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Fan, Y., Clark, Martyn, Lawrence, David M., Swenson, Sean, Band, L. E., Brantley, S. L., Brooks, P. D., Dietrich, W. E., Flores, A., Grant, G., Kirchner, J. W., Mackay, D. S., McDonnell, J. J., Milly, P. C. D., Sullivan, P. L., Tague, C., Ajami, H., Chaney, N., Hartmann, A., Hazenberg, P., McNamara, J., Pelletier, J., Perket, J., Rouholahnejad‐Freund, E., Wagener, T., Zeng, X., Beighley, E., Buzan, J., Huang, M., Livneh, B., Mohanty, B. P., Nijssen, B., Safeeq, M., Shen, C., Verseveld, W., Volk, J., Yamazaki, D.. (2019). Hillslope hydrology in global change research and Earth System Modeling. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7zg6w9q. Accessed 17 June 2025.

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