Open AccessHydrological resilience and how catchments can switch steady states
Author(s) -
Schultz Colin
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/2012eo510016
Subject(s) - aquifer , groundwater , environmental science , hydrology (agriculture) , resilience (materials science) , modflow , attractor , wetland , climate change , geology , groundwater flow , ecology , oceanography , geotechnical engineering , physics , thermodynamics , mathematical analysis , mathematics , biology
If a system has a positive feedback, then it may have multiple stable states, or attractors, and finite resilience. Traditional techniques to calculate system resilience to outside pressures revolve around identifying the system state at a transition point and then figuring out how far that is from a steady state. An increasing number of hydrological systems with positive feedbacks have been modeled, including peatlands, wetlands, lakes, and saline aquifers. For groundwater, changes in rainfall may lead to a switch in the steadystate groundwater level, even if the rainfall returns to its past values. To date it has been unclear how climate causes a switch between steady states. Using a simple aquifer model, Peterson et al. explored how a catchment switches steady states and the associated groundwater level dynamics.