Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2006NE126B

Water quantity and quality within the Great Plains: Model development within a Nebraska Basin

Institute: Nebraska
Year Established: 2006 Start Date: 2006-03-01 End Date: 2007-08-28
Total Federal Funds: $11,038 Total Non-Federal Funds: $22,075

Principal Investigators: Erkan Istanbulluoglu, Durelle Scott

Abstract: Water is the lifeblood of the Great Plains. However, both water quantity and quality within the Great Plains is expected to alter in response to climate change. The emphasis of this study is to develop a physically based, spatially-explicit continuous hydrology and water quality modeling framework for investigating water and material fluxes in space and time under highly uncertain climatic forcing and land management applications in the Great Plains. The proposed model will represent linkages between regional climate, and terrestrial hydrology and ecology, in order to predict riverine water and material fluxes. The model will be used to initially explore the water balance and nitrogen fate and transport in a mid-size study basin in Nebraska, but the underlying structure will be adaptable to address the fate of other contaminants under changing forcing and environmental conditions in much larger space and time scales.