1. Research goals
The research goals of our center are to utilize the principles of surface earth system sciences to reveal the mechanisms of land-surface ecohydrological evolution and improve the sustainable utilization of water resources under global change, specifically with regards to water and energy fluxes within the earth’s critical zone and their feedback mechanisms with ecological processes, development of a multi-layer coupled hydrological model of the earth’s critical zone, assessment of the ecohydrological functions of the earth’s critical zone, prediction of the evolution trend of hydrology and water resources under global change, and construction of a systematic analysis system and sustainable utilization model for water resources.
2.Research Directions
Based on the research goals, there are three main research directions in our center, including:
(1) Ecohydrology
• Land surface water and heat dynamics, and remote sensing hydrology
• Atmosphere-vegetation-hydrology feedback mechanism and modeling
• Response of ecohydrology to climate and land-use changes
(2) Subsurface hydrology
• Hydrodynamic processes in soil and bedrock fissure
• Groundwater and solute transport models
• Hydrological and hydrodynamic processes in riparian zone, wetland, and marine-terrestrial interlaced zone
(3) Global change and water resources
• Evolution of hydrological processes in earth’s critical zone
• System integration of water resources and regionalization analysis
• Global change and sustainable utilization of water resources
3.Research Activities and Projects
In recent years, we have been supported by national scientific research projects to investigate water consumption by land surface vegetation, soil water and bedrock fissure water movement and their relationship with ecology and environment to solve the ecological and environmental problems in the coastal area, northwest inland area, southwest karst area, and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. In addition, we have extensive academic collaborations with domestic universities and research institutes, as well as more than ten universities and scientific research institutes from the United States, UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries.
Major scientific research projects undertaken in the past five years include:
• Sub-project of National Key Research and Development Program of China: “Basic research on reasonable development and utilization of groundwater and prevention and control of ecological function degradation in ecologically fragile areas”（2016-2020）
• Major International Cooperation and Exchanges Program of NSFC: “The transmissive critical zone under land use and environmental pressures: understanding the karst hydrology-biogeochemical coupling for sustainable management” （2016-2019）
• Major Program of NSFC: “The formation mechanism and evolution of groundwater in the typical basins of the Yarlung Zangbo River”（2018-2021）
• Sub-project of joint fund of NSFC - Guizhou Karst Research Center: “Water safety and regulation for damming rivers in karst region”（2017-2021）
• General Program of NSFC: “The characteristics and coupling mechanisms of two-phase flow and non-Fickian transport in fractures”（2020-2023）
• Youth Program of NSFC: “Research on Pedotransfer Functions of Unsaturated Soil Hydraulic Parameters”（2019-2021）
• Youth Program of NSFC: “The study of catchment time-varying storage-discharge relationship and the modeling of low flow under the effect of frozen ground in high altitude and cold regions”（2020-2022）
