Please join us for this (Virtual) Winter Seminar Series with Speaker: Reed Maxwell, Ph.D

Title: Hydrology in the Supercomputing Age: How Computational Advances Have Revolutionized Our Field, and What Big Data and Massively Parallel Simulations Mean for the Future of Hydrologic Discovery.  

Abstract: We are in the midst of a revolution in computing and data. In the past 50 years we have moved from electrical analog models to massively parallel computer systems. The fastest computers in the world when landmark papers such as Freeze and Harlan were written are much slower than the average smartphone of today. Hydrology is taking advantage of this revolution in many ways. Computational Hydrology seeks to leverage modern computing capacity to study water and energy fluxes and stores across the hydrologic cycle at spatial scales and complexity not previously possible. Integrated hydrologic simulations that couple boundary layer, vegetation, and land energy processes with surface and subsurface hydrology have great potential to advance our understanding of terrestrial hydrology spanning small catchments to the continental scale. Several movements within hydrology, such as the so-called hyperresolution approach, have organized and accelerated this goal. Hydrologic simulation from a historical perspective, starting with the early watershed models to more modern, integrated and machine learning approaches that realize blueprints laid out fifty years ago will be presented. The lecture will discuss how computational advances are shaping our simulation capabilities, changing the questions that we are able to ask as scientist, and changing how we educate our students. High-resolution, continental-scale simulation is an exciting component of computational hydrology forecasting and scientific discovery. It will outline a path to move beyond our traditional siloed simulation platforms and to leverage these large datasets and massive community development investments to better connect our hydrologic models to the communities outside of hydrology.

BIO: Reed Maxwell is a Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and the High Meadows Environmental Institute (MHEI) at Princeton University. He also directs the Integrated GroundWater Modeling Center (IGWMC). His research interests are focused on understanding connections within the hydrologic cycle and how they relate to water quantity and quality under anthropogenic stresses. He was the 2020 Henry Darcy Distinguished Lecturer, is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, was the 2018 Boussinesq Lecture and the 2017 School of Mines Research Award recipient. He has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and teaches classes on integrated hydrology, fluid mechanics and modeling terrestrial water flow. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Environmental Water Resources from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

A special thanks to Steve Gorelick for bringing this speaker to our Seminar on this date. Also, thanks to  Morgan O'Neill and Jamie Jones for co-instructing and running this Virtual Seminar Series This Winter by bringing you experts in the fields as we learn from them. 

For Zoom Information: 

https://stanford.zoom.us/j/98802388371?pwd=UEtUbTg3YXJ5emgzYnErMHNYUlFpdz09