coHydrology
@ UB
Dr.
D. Scott Mackay's Biosketch
I hold BSc. and MSc. degrees in Physical Geography,
and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, from the University of
Toronto.
My research concerns vegetative controls over water cycling, hydrological controls on carbon cycling, hydrological and ecosystem modeling, model parameterization, and model uncertainty. These activities consist of model development supported by field observations primarily in forests, forested wetlands, and recently in semi-arid
shrub systems. Numerous funding agencies have funded this work, including NSF, NASA, EPA, and DOE. I regularly teach courses on global climate change, ecohydrology,
and earth
surface processes, and have previously taught courses in hydrology,
remote sensing, and GIS. My wife, son, and I live in Clarence, NY, where we
enjoy biking, gardening, and travel.
Research foci
a)
Climate change impacts on wetland rich ecosystems
Prediction
of climate change impacts on terrestrial carbon fluxes is highly
uncertain. Upland ecosystem models, even when constrained with
flux tower data, fail to explain interannual variability in CO2
fluxes in the upper Midwest. One possible reason is lack of model
mechanisms for wetland biogeochemistry and hydrology, where fluxes
would be expected to vary with changes in depth to saturation.
Wetlands are expected to be highly sensitive to climate change.
We are developing a wetland-landscape model to assimilate
long-term multiple flux tower observations and simulate wetland
and upland mechanisms simultaneously, with evaluation against
unassimilated flux observations.
>
See publications 4, 5, 13, 21, 22, 24, and 35.
b)
Controls on tree transpiration along environmental gradients
My group has been developing a general theory of transpiration that
embraces the spatial variability of stomatal control while retaining
a tractable
measure of generality that is the hallmark of empirical models
of stomatal conductance. We show that species plasticity in canopy
stomatal conductance follows a linear relationship keyed
to an easily quantifiable reference conductance. This work has
broad implications for land surface modeling efforts directed at
global
change effects
on water cycling.
Such models are essential foundations
for the creation and implementation of credible policies aimed
at mitigating or adjusting to the consequences of anticipated global
change.
>
See publications 14, 16, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and 32.
--> See: NSF
Discoveries - Taking the Pulse of the Forest
--> or: LiveScience
Article: Taking the Pulse of the Forest
c)
Modeling land surface processes
A
general focus area for our research has been on scaling and representation
issues associated with quantifying non-linear dynamics of ecosystem
processes due to complex soil, vegetetation, and topographic properties.
This research includes water-carbon coupling in vegetative systems
and controls on mosquito vectors.
>
See publications 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 20, 23, 31, and 33.
d)
Terrestrial Regional Ecosystem Exchange Simulator, TREES
Over
the past few years we have been developing an ecosystem model
that couples plant hydraulics with carbon processes. The
model has been used extensively by our group to study canopy
transpiration and stomatal conductance, and it is now being
used to examine carbon cycling in systems ranging from semi-arid
sagebush steppe to forested wetlands.
>
See publications 19,
27, 28, 29, 32.
Research
Links
• National
Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA)
• Ecosystem Restoration through Interdisciplinary Exchange (ERIE)
• Chequamegon
Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (ChEAS)
• The
Susquehanna River Basin Hydrologic Observatory System (SRBHOS)
• North
American Carbon Program (NACP)
• Community of Science Profile
• Semantic Integration of Geographic Information Training Group
