The Everglades region in south Florida is a unique hydrological and ecological environment. Anthropogenic changes in the past century, mainly for water supply, agricultural development and flood control purposes, have disrupted natural water flow in the wetlands and severely impacted the regional ecosystem. Currently, water flow in the Everglades is controlled by a series of levees, canals, hydraulic control structures, and pumps to prevent flooding and regulate flow rates, which also suppress natural water level fluctuations, essential for supporting the fragile wetland ecosystem. This controlled Everglades environment provides a natural large-scale laboratory for monitoring and modeling surface and groundwater flow in the wetland ecosystem. Enhanced modeling capabilities and understanding of the Everglades hydrological system are essential for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, which is the largest and most expensive (multi-billion dollar) wetland restoration project yet attempted. In this session we solicit contributions that cover all aspects of Everglades hydrology, including monitoring, modeling, climate change and variability, water management, restoration plans and sea level rise. In particular we would like to address the question “What is our current understanding of the hydrology of the Everglades, seven years into the restoration project?”
Site characterization is a critical component in hydrologic modeling for any water issue. Poor site characterization may lead to a failure of remedial design such as reactive barrier or pump and treat methods. Insufficient site information may hinder an accurate prediction of potential flooding hazard or an efficient management of water use in urban or agricultural areas. Although we have significant improvement of site characterization in the past two decades, we still have many questions: "Does additional sampling always improve our modeling process?", "What extent of data can we use or integrate to have an accurate hydrologic model?”, “How can we make economically effective and scientifically sound site characterization?" This session is looking for recent studies focusing on computational or statistical site characterization techniques to improve accuracy of hydrologic modeling. Potential topics may include directed site exploration, neural networking, geographical information system, data assimilation, model data-worth analysis and geophysical data integration. Both theoretical and real case studies are welcome.
Karst ecohydrology is an emerging, cross-disciplinary field of study concerned with understanding vegetation-hydrological interactions in karst, a landform underlain by highly soluble rock in which there is significant water movement through gaps in the bedrock. Woody plants in this environment typically extract water not only from the soil but also from the epikarst, the transition zone from the soil to the unweathered bedrock, and possibly from the bedrock itself. Although 25% of the world’s and 40% of the United States’ freshwater comes from karst aquifers, few studies have asked how plants modify the quality and quantity of aquifer recharge. This is beginning to change as plant ecophysiologists team up with hydrologists and geologists to study this fascinating landform and its ecosystem functions and services. To our knowledge, the proposed session on karst ecohydrology is the first dedicated entirely to this topic. We hope to use this session as a spring board for a more extensive, international symposium on karst ecohydrology. The 2008 joint assembly meeting is a particularly fitting venue for this session, first because it provides the opportunity to raise international awareness of karst ecohydrology as an emerging field of investigation and second because the meeting location in Florida coincides with one of the largest karst areas in the United States and should therefore also draw significant local interest. The proposers are a plant ecophysiologist (Susan Schwinning) and a hydrologist (Brad Wilcox) with a shared interest in karst ecohydrology and a record of previous conference collaborations.
Colloid and colloid-facilitated transport in surface and subsurface flow has received increased attention as the result of concerns over water quality and public health. Typically defined as suspended particulate matter with diameters less than 10µm, colloids include both organic and inorganic materials such as microorganisms, humic substances, clay minerals, metal oxides, and engineered nanoparticles. Pathogenic biocolloids, abiotic colloid-contaminant complexes, and toxic nanoparticles in water flow have shown mobility in hydrologic pathways and can impose risks to water resources.
We invite submissions that involve elucidating contents on fate and transport of natural colloids, colloid-contaminant complexes, pathogens, and engineered nanomaterials in surface and subsurface flow. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to: 1) Colloid transport in overland flow; 2) Colloid transport in porous media; 3) Colloid-facilitated contaminant transport; and 4) Tracer and characterization techniques for colloid transport studies. We encourage theoretical studies as well as pore-scale, bench-scale, and field experimentation.