CEE Seminar: Streamflow Regimes: Drivers, Classification and Implications

Abstract: River flow regimes are the complex byproduct of diverse ecohydrologic and climatic processes, which are characterized by pronounced spatial and temporal variability. The talk will identify the main drivers of streamflow dynamics through the use of a stochastic mechanistic approach, which enables a novel classification of flow regimes into erratic (enhanced variability of daily flows) and persistent (reduced variability of daily flows). This classification proves crucial to define the nature and magnitude of many in-stream ecological processes, including riparian vegetation dynamics and microinvertebrate grazing rates, and it bears fundamental implications for the characterization of the flooding potential of rivers and the identification of sediment transport associated with river flows. The seminar will make use of compelling theoretical arguments and empirical observations to provide an overview of the major implications of the difference between erratic and persistent flow regimes for ecology, hydrology and geomorphology.

Bio: Gianluca Botter holds a degree in environmental engineering (2001) and a Ph.D in environmental modeling (2005) from the University of Padova, where he’s currently associate professor of hydrology and water resources management. He’s author and co-author of more than 60 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including PNAS, PlosONE, GRL and WRR (Google scholar h-index = 25). In 2010 he was awarded the Torricelli prize as a leading under-34 researcher in the fields of hydraulics and hydrology. In 2011 he received the Outstanding Referee Award for Water Resources Research from the American Geophysical Union, and in 2013 he was awarded the Certificate of Excellence in Reviewing by Advances in Water Resources, Elsevier. His scientific interests include: i) the characterization of river flow regimes from landscape and climate; ii) the development of catchment-scale transport models based on the concept of dynamical travel time distributions; iii) the analysis of water quality patterns in space and time; iv) the interaction between anthropogenic activities, flow regimes and in-stream ecological processes.