A Deeper Look at Mountain Hydrology - Partitioning, Storage and Release

In this talk, Dr. W Payton Gardner summarizes his Lab’s work delving deeper into mountain system hydrology; exploring how water is partitioned, stored, and released with a variety of techniques from isotopes to geodetic deflection, which are providing new insights into storage, residence time, and release of water in these watersheds. Water falling within a watershed is partitioned between a variety of intimately connected terrestrial reservoirs. The partitioning, storage, and release from these reservoirs control watershed hydrologic function; carbon, geochemical and nutrient budgets; and response to climate change. Mountain systems present a variety of difficulties in instrumentation and monitoring, which limit the amount known about the storage and release mechanics of these systems, in particular the deeper subsurface reservoirs.