4400322e_search_Program__NRP_Scientists__Details
[Scientist] Robert D Jarrett [Research Area] Paleohydrology and Climate Change show details View Publications [Science Topics] Geomorphology and Sediment Transport; Hydroclimatology (including droughts and floods); Rivers and Streams [Last Name] Jarrett [Details] 
To anticipate the effects of potential climate change (natural or anthropogenic) on hydrology and to assess hydrologic trends will require an understanding of past long-term hydrologic variability. There also is a critical need for data on extreme floods for better understanding flood processes, in engineering hydrology, flood-hazard mitigation, and other disciplines requiring flood-risk assessments. Probably the best information on hydrologic variability and extreme floods is provided by paleohydrologic and other proxy data analyzed with the help of hydrologic models. Methods for extending existing climatic and hydrologic records over long-time scales are needed. A relatively new approach, one that complements hydrologic modeling efforts, involves the application of paleohydrology to determine regional scale hydrologic variability over relatively long-time intervals (100 to 10,000 years). Existing techniques for paleohydrologic reconstruction have large errors; hence, there is a critical need to improve paleohydrologic techniques. The primary goals of this project are to (1) improve techniques to reconstruct the fluvial history of river basins, particularly for extreme floods; (2) improve the understanding of hydrologic and hydraulic processes to improve numerical models of rivers; and (3) improve the understanding of links between climate and hydrology. These goals are closely related because the development and use of paleohydrologic techniques require an understanding of geomorphic response to climate change and an improved understanding of hydrologic and hydraulic processes.
USGS National Research Program: NRP Scientists
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