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Colloquium: Sustainability of Water Resources in Drylands – Challenges and Solutions

Event Details:

  • Date:       Thursday 31 October 2019
  • Time:      Starts: 16:00
  • Venue:    The Cyprus InstituteGuy Ourisson Building, Seminar Room, 1st Floor, Athalassa Campus
  • Speaker: Professor Maciek Lubczynski, University of Twente, The Netherlands
The colloquium will be in English and the event is open to the public.
Live streaming of the lecture will be available on The Cyprus Institute’s YouTube Channel
Live streaming is facilitated by the CySTEM project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under Grant Agreement No. 667942.
Images and/or recordings of our open public events may be used by The Cyprus Institute for dissemination purposes including print and digital media such as websites, press-releases, social media, and live streaming.

 

Abstract

Drylands are the areas where yearly potential evapotranspiration is much larger than rainfall so water resources are scare and under threat due to: i) direct human impact (e.g. overuse of water resources); ii) land cover change (e.g. agricultural activity, deforestation/aforestation); and iii) climate change (reduction of rainfall/increase of temperature). The complexity of these impacts, particularly when acting jointly, requires adequate assessment techniques and solutions. Two types of research approaches will be presented at three different scales: i) catchment scale (large scale); ii) plot scale (medium scale) and iii) tree scale (small scale). These approaches, will be presented in three steps: 1) data acquisition; 2) data integration; 3) modelling.

At the catchment scale, various case studies addressing problems of impacts of human activity, land cover change and climate change on water resources, will be discussed. In these studies, different methods of data acquisition will be presented involving: remote sensing, hydrogeophysics, automated monitoring and traditional field sampling. For data integration with numerical distributed models, geospatial data analysis platforms will be evaluated regarding their ability to be interfaced with Integrated Hydrological Models (IHMs). Finally, it will be shown that the IHMs provide optimal solutions for sustainable water resources management.

The research at the plot and tree scale focuses on interactions of trees with water and soil, addressing mainly the ongoing world-debate whether planting or cutting trees in drylands, increases or decreases water resources. In contrast to traditional understanding, lots of recent research, including our research, shows that afforestation of a land, leads to decline of water table and decrease of available water resources. These conclusions are based on whole-tree and plot scale water balance studies, carried out using: i) field sampling; ii) field monitoring of tree sap flow, groundwater level, soil moisture and micrometeorological variables; iii) high resolution remote sensing; and iv) modelling.

 

About The Speaker

M W LubczynskiDr. M.W. Lubczynski is Associate Professor at the Department of Water Resources, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente in The Netherlands. He obtained two MSc degrees, in Hydrogeology and in Civil Engineering, and a PhD degree in numerical groundwater modeling. From 1982 till 1992 he worked in Geological Institute in Wroclaw University in Poland and since 1993 till now at the University Twente in the Netherlands. As ITC staff he has been engaged in numerous applied consulting and research projects in Southern Africa, Spain, Portugal and Poland. Within these projects he supervised/co-supervised more than 50 MSc and 9 PhD students – currently he supervises another 6 PhD students.

The present research of Dr Lubczynski focuses on modern methods of data acquisition for integrated hydrological modeling and on solving ecohydrological problems in drylands. He is currently on a short sabbatical with the Water Division of the EEWRC at the Cyprus Institute.

 

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Additional Info

  • Date: Thursday 31 October 2019
  • Time: Starts: 16:00
  • Speaker: Professor Maciek Lubczynski
  • Speaker Position: University of Twente, The Netherlands