Summary of my work presented in the following studies

1. Physio-climatic controls on vulnerability of watersheds to climate and land use change across the United States.

  • We combine the strengths of recently developed exploratory modeling frameworks and comparative hydrology to quantify the relationship between watershed’s vulnerability and its physio-climatic characteristics.
  • We propose a definition of vulnerability that can be used by a diverse range of water system managers and is useful in the presence of large uncertainties in drivers of environmental change.
  • We estimate the vulnerability of 69 watersheds in the United States to climate and land use change.

2. A Whittaker-Biome based framework to account for the impact of climate change on catchment behavior

  • Rainfall-runoff models are often used to simulate the impact of long-term climate change on future water availability.
  • We compare estimates of catchment’s vulnerability to climate change obtained from fixed and changing parameters.
  • Our analysis shows that considering changes in catchment’s representative parameters with climate significantly alters the estimated vulnerability to climate change for a majority of catchments.

3. Discovering linkages between catchment characteristics and hydrologic response within a catchment classification framework

  • Our main goals in this study was to develop a framework for classification that can be employed to standardize classification exercises in hydrology.
  • We stress on two important aspects: the use of multiple classification methods and standardized performance metrics to gauge the success of a classification exercise.
  • We compare clustering based on water quality metrics and clustering based on catchment characteristics to identify combinations of catchment characteristics that best explain water quality variations.
  • We prepare a comprehensive database for catchment characteristics for catchments across India and use it to understand regional drivers of water quality.