Watersheds as Complex Systems: Top-down and Bottom-up Approaches
Watersheds as Complex Systems: Top-down and Bottom-up Approaches
Session ID#: 119350
Session Description:
The water community has increasingly embraced watersheds as complex systems with inherent properties of non-linearity, self-organization, and emergence. Analytics tend to center in two complementary but distinct domains: 1) System Dynamics, top-down approaches using systemic equations to understand feedbacks, dominance, and causation, and 2) Cybernetics, bottom-up approaches that consider the system as a set of interacting agents operating with local rules to produce emergent behavior. A combination of approaches is necessary to capture individual-level heterogeneity while also understanding higher-level processes. We welcome abstracts that apply complexity approaches, including, but not limited to:
- System Dynamics
- Participatory Modeling
- Agent-based Modeling
- Information/Chaos/Game Theories
- Artificial Intelligence
- Neural Networking
- Evolutionary Dynamics
- Cellular Automata
To better understand socio and eco-hydrological phenomena within watersheds, such as:
- Coupled Human-water Systems
- Catchment Processes
- Nature-based Solutions
- Water Resources Management
- Climate Adaptation
- Optimization & Co-evolution
Index Terms:
0414 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling [BIOGEOSCIENCES]
1630 Impacts of global change [GLOBAL CHANGE]
1803 Anthropogenic effects [HYDROLOGY]
1804 Catchment [HYDROLOGY]
Primary Convener: Cyndi V Castro, University of Houston, Houston, TX, United States
Conveners: David J. Yu, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States, Gopal Penny, University of Notre Dame, Environmental Change Initiative, Notre Dame, IN, United States and Li Xu, Global Institute for Water Security, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Primary Liaison: Cyndi V Castro, University of Houston, Houston, TX, United States
See more of: Hydrology