AGU fall meeting 2013

Last week, lab members presented their latest findings at the AGU conference in San Francisco.

But before we got down to the serious stuff, we firstly kicked off the conference with our annual lab beer night at Edinburgh Castle on the Monday night. We filled the pub (see the pic below) and had a great time catching up with lab mates old and new.

Later in the week, Willemijn presented new data of soil and bedrock permeability at the Panola hillslope (with measurements taken by Chris Graham during his PhD) and new model simulations that show the effects of these parameters on the spatial variability of groundwater recharge into the bedrock.

Then, Anna presented an analysis of the controls on runoff response on a semi-arid, prairie landscape based on 52 years’ worth of runoff, precipitation, soil, land use and weather data from experimental hillslope plots in southern Saskatchewan. Preliminary results show that the dominant control on runoff amount during spring snowmelt is the soil moisture amount in the previous fall season. Secondary controls are the timing and length of the spring snowmelt period, and the frozen ground condition.