In grade school, you may have learned about the water cycle. Water falls from the sky as varied forms of precipitation, exists on the Earth as groundwater or surface water, evaporates or transpires into the atmosphere as gas, and condenses back into a liquid (or solid) state.
However, that depiction doesn’t describe the entire breadth of how water moves today. Newly appointed Michigan State University AgBioResearch-affiliated scientists are diving deeper into the water story, working to better understand water movement and the human impact on it.
Adaptive modeling shows how human processes influence the water cycle
Yadu Pokhrel, a Red Cedar Distinguished Professor in the College of Engineering’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, emphasizes through his water models how human activity contributes to the movement, quality and availability of water — ultimately presenting a greater look at how water can be conserved and sustainably managed.
“If you look at the textbook version of the hydrological cycle, it’s no longer the modern-day cycle because human activity has completely disrupted it,” Pokhrel said. “I look at how human activities such as irrigation for food production and the extraction of groundwater impact the water cycle.
“The questions I answer through my models are: How does the hydrological cycle respond when humans take water from somewhere and put it in another pool where it moves elsewhere, and how does water availability change in response to an alteration in the cycle?”
Informing recommendations on water conservation and management
Phanikumar Mantha, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, studies the movement and quality of water — including groundwater — in the Great Lakes region.
Roughly 45 percent of people in Michigan utilize groundwater for drinking water, and well over 1,510 million gallons per day are withdrawn from the region. However, in some parts of the state, not enough water is recharging into the underground aquifers located closer to Earth’s surface, so water is being pumped from deeper within the ground.
Two of Mantha’s current research priorities are to examine how the quality of coastal water within the Great Lakes is affected by the circulation of different contaminants and how water moves and transports chemical and biological agents throughout the region’s watersheds.
Funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and USGS has allowed Mantha to carry out research equipping beach managers with the information needed to determine when a Great Lakes beach needs to be closed due to poor coastal water quality.
Read more at hydrologic modeling.
Story courtesy of MSU AgBioResearch.