Hydrology, Water and Landscape
The Hydrology, Water and Landscape group within the Environmental Processes cluster is led by Keith Richards and Mike Bithell.
The group's research explores a range of modelling, monitoring and experimental methods to explain the functioning of fluvial, hydrological, and landscape systems. For example, the group has used computational fluid dynamics methods to simulate and interpret flow structures in rivers, and discrete element methods to study bedload transport and slope-scree systems (see the animation below), while also exploring reduced complexity, grid-based models to understand catchment sediment supply, flooding and floodplain dynamics.
Regional interests include research in Europe, China, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Thailand, in the latter case on land cover change and hydrology and extreme floods in the north-west, and groundwater management in Phuket. The group complements its research into the science of water with projects that deal with various aspects of the management of water as a resource.
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This research is interdisciplinary in being concerned with ecological processes as well as physical ones. Thus it is examining the interrelationships amongst land cover changes, hydrology and sediment production and delivery at the catchment scale; land cover change and soil water dynamics on the Tibetan plateau; hydrology, hydraulics, floodplain ecology, and channel change in floodplain-channel systems; and ecological assessment of water quality. The floodplain focus has been concerned with how floodplain hydrology affects natural ecosystems, and how the physical character of those ecosystems affects flow resistance and floodwater retention on floodplains, this being part of a broader concern with floodplain restoration that simultaneously realises biodiversity and flood risk management objectives. The European FLOBAR projects are examples of this research (FLOodplain Biodiversity And Restoration), which have produced influential Guidelines on restoration practice. This has developed into current research on the relationships amongst hydromorphology, aquatic ecology and water quality as embodied in the Water Framework Directive.
The group thus also works at the interface between water science and water, river and river basin management. One example of this is the Cambridge Arsenic Project, which has synthesised understanding about the diverse forms of natural pollution of water by arsenic, and addressed the potential for remediation in those areas – such as the Bengal Basin – most at risk. A current project on RIver BAsin GOvernance (RiBaGo) is examining the institutional structures for integrated and adaptive river basin management, and involves collaboration between Cambridge, Oxford, Dundee, German and Dutch partners, the Chinese Academies of Science and Social Sciences, and the International Institute of Macau. A more speculative project is a collaboration with colleagues in several other Departments in Cambridge to develop a visualisation tool (Foreseer), based on the Sankey diagram concept, that allows evaluation of the ways in which services are provided through the integrated allocation and use of water, energy and land.
Graduate students
The group includes the following current graduate students:
- Siyuan He - Water balance under different surface conditions in Kobresia meadow, Northern Tibet
- Marta Lang - Toxic chemical contamination of freshwater used rurally for domestic purposes and associated human health indicators in the Sindh Indus river catchment, Pakistan
- Feng Mao - Water Framework Directive, Interactions of Quality Elements and River Basin Governance in China
- Andre Silveira – Processes of Integration in River Basin Management: the experience in Europe's Rhine River basin and implications for China´s Zhujiang (Pearl River) basin
- Hongthai Tan - Sustainable water resource management and globalization: the case of Phuket, Thailand
Former PhD students include:
- Rachel Horn - Flow resistance of woody riparian vegetation
- Han She Lim - Hydrology and sediment yield at different scales in northern Thailand
- Renee Kidson - The palaeohydrology of the Mae Chaem catchment, northern Thailand
- Hilary McMillan - Modelling flood frequency in a lowland catchment in eastern England
- Alexander Anonarakis - The potential of LiDAR in recovering physical data on floodplain vegetation to parameterise flow resistance.
- Jie Ding - A study of spatially-distributed supply and delivery of sediment in the Xihanshu Basin, Gansu Province, China.
- Rebecca Hodge - Fluvial Sediment transport, with particular reference to bedforms in coarse bedded rivers.
- Clare Cox - Channel dynamics and riparian biodiversity