Data underlying the research of: Improved understanding of the link between catchment-scale vegetation accessible storage and satellite-derived Soil Water Index. (Bouaziz et al. 2020, Water Resources Research)

This data was used to derive a catchment-scale connection between vegetation accessible water storage capacities and the characteristic time length of the Soil Water Index to estimate root-zone soil moisture from remotely-sensed near-surface soil moisture

hydroMT-wflow

wflow plugin for hydroMT

Conserved domains and structure prediction of human cytomegalovirus UL27 protein.

International audienceThe human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) nuclear UL27 protein (pUL27) could be involved at the stage of nuclear egress. Maribavir is a new anti-HCMV drug that targets nuclear egress through direct inhibition of the HCMV serine-threonine kinase, UL97 protein (pUL97). Because maribavir-resistance-related mutations are observed in both proteins, pUL27 is thought to interfere with pUL97 activity; however, its mechanism of action remains unclear

Ecosystem adaptation to climate change: The sensitivity of hydrological predictions to time-dynamic model parameters

Future hydrological behavior in a changing world is typically predicted based on models that are calibrated on past observations, disregarding that hydrological systems and, therefore, model parameters may change as well. In reality, hydrological systems experience almost continuous change over a wide spectrum of temporal and spatial scales. In particular, there is growing evidence that vegetation adapts to changing climatic conditions by adjusting its root zone storage capacity, which is the key parameter of any terrestrial hydrological system. In addition, other species may become dominant, both under natural and anthropogenic influence. In this study, we test the sensitivity of hydrological model predictions to changes in vegetation parameters that reflect ecosystem adaptation to climate and potential land use changes. We propose a top-down approach, which directly uses projected climate data to estimate how vegetation adapts its root zone storage capacity at the catchment scale in response to changes in the magnitude and seasonality of hydro-climatic variables. Additionally, long-term water balance characteristics of different dominant ecosystems are used to predict the hydrological behavior of potential future land use change in a space-for-time exchange. We hypothesize that changes in the predicted hydrological response as a result of 2gK global warming are more pronounced when explicitly considering changes in the subsurface system properties induced by vegetation adaptation to changing environmental conditions. We test our hypothesis in the Meuse basin in four scenarios designed to predict the hydrological response to 2gK global warming in comparison to current-day conditions, using a process-based hydrological model with (a) a stationary system, i.e., no assumed changes in the root zone storage capacity of vegetation and historical land use, (b) an adapted root zone storage capacity in response to a changing climate but with historical land use and (c,gd) an adapted root zone storage capacity considering two hypothetical changes in land use. We found that the larger root zone storage capacities (+34g%) in response to a more pronounced climatic seasonality with warmer summers under 2gK global warming result in strong seasonal changes in the hydrological response. More specifically, streamflow and groundwater storage are up to -15g% and -10g% lower in autumn, respectively, due to an up to +14g% higher summer evaporation in the non-stationary scenarios compared to the stationary benchmark scenario. By integrating a time-dynamic representation of changing vegetation properties in hydrological models, we make a potential step towards more reliable hydrological predictions under change

HydroMT: Automated and reproducible model building and analysis

HydroMT (Hydro Model Tools) is an open-source Python package that facilitates the process of building and analyzing spatial geoscientific models with a focus on water system models. It does so by automating the workflow to go from raw data to a complete model instance which is ready to run and to analyse model results once the simulation has finished

Looking beyond general metrics for model evaluation - lessons from an international model intercomparison study

status: publishe

Looking beyond general metrics for model comparison - lessons from an international model inter-comparison study

International collaboration between research institutes and universities is a promising way to reach consensus on hydrological model development. Although comparative studies are very valuable for international cooperation, they do often not lead to very clear new insights regarding the relevance of the modelled processes. We hypothesise that this is partly caused by model complexity and the comparison methods used, which focus too much on a good overall performance instead of focusing on specific events. In this 5 study, we use an approach that focuses on the evaluation of specific events and characteristics. Eight international research groups calibrated their hourly model on the Ourthe catchment in Belgium and carried out a validation in time for the Ourthe catchment and a validation in space for nested and neighbouring catchments. The same protocol was followed for each model and an ensemble of best performing parameter sets was selected. Although the models showed similar performances based on general metrics (i.e. Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency), clear differences could be observed for specific 10 events. The results illustrate the relevance of including a very quick flow reservoir preceding the root zone storage to model peaks during low flows and including a slow reservoir in parallel with the fast reservoir to model the recession for the Ourthe catchment. This intercomparison enhanced the understanding of the hydrological functioning of the catchment and, above all, helped to evaluate each model against a set of alternative models.status: publishe