Environment & Society Research Program

Keck Hydrowatch Center

Keck Hydrowatch Center:
Administered by the Berkeley Institute of the Environment, the Keck HydroWatch Center will dramatically expand the observations of all aspects of the water cycle by developing cost-effective, rapid-response, and accurate sensors and techniques to monitor water quality, quantity, and pathways. The center is initiating a prototype deployment of intensive environmental monitoring networks, resulting in the acquisition, synthesis, and analysis of new, large volumes of data. The first deployments will take place at two small (~10-102 km2), hydrologically different sites within the UC Natural Reserve System: the Angelo Coast Range Reserve and the Sagehen Creek Field Station.

One goal of the HydroWatch project is to create a model of the entire hydrologic system that integrates the atmospheric, surface, and below-ground variations of water. This model will allow researchers to address a number of long-standing questions about how the water cycle functions and how it may change.

  
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QUEST on KQED Public Media."

Aside from periodic measurements of rainfall and stream flow, and images from satellite tracking of storms and snow cover, little is known about the complex life cycle of water.
 
  1. How is fresh water resupplied and recycled?
  2. What is the distribution of water vapor in the lowest kilometer of the atmosphere and of soil moisture across the landscape?
  3. How do atmospheric and land-surface processes alter these distributions?
  4. How long do watersheds store water in the subsurface, and by what combination of flowpaths does this water reach the stream?

Once the prototype network has been demonstrated, scientists expect that this model can be readily scaled-up and deployed at continental-scale (>104-105 km2) watersheds, creating a national and international standard for water-monitoring programs.

Funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation

NRS Reserves Utilized in Support of This Research:

 
  • Angelo Coast Range Reserve
  • Sagehen Creek Field Station

Principal Investigators at University of California, Berkeley:

Inez Fung
Department of Earth and Planetary Science; Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management;
Co-Director, Berkeley Institute of the Environment

Ronald Cohen
Department of Chemistry; Director, Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center

David Culler
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Donald DePaolo
Department of Earth and Planetary Science; Director, Center for Isotope Geochemistry

William Dietrich
Department of Earth and Planetary Science; Co-Leader, National Center for Earth- Surface Dynamics and National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping

James Kirchner
Department of Earth and Planetary Science; Director, UC Berkeley Central Sierra Field Research Stations