On Thursday, November 04, 1999, I visited Bldg 33 (the new earth sciences building). The primary purpose of this trip was to coordinate with my CO-Is Adam Schlosser & David Mocko to work on an GCIP-LSA/NW project involving subgrid snow cover representations using Glen Liston’s parameterizations and related land-air-surface & groundwater interactions. The meeting was also joined by Yogesh Sud, a collaborator in the project. Methodologies for representing subgrid snow melt processes in the Simplified Simple Biosphere model (SSiB) and its ramifications on the aggregation of surface fluxes and groundwater were discussed in detail.

We were also made aware of recent adjustments in SSiB that permit an explicit water table representation in the vertical using a very high resolution soil zone. Methods of transferring this to LSM (the parameterization currently in use with our NSF-EPSCoR/UMRB modeling work) and in enhancing both SSiB and LSM // Modflow interactions were discussed. This new representation may prove to be more accurate (albeit more costly computationwise) than the current setup within LSM, SSiB and most other Land-Surface parameterizations, though its implementation is quite simple and may also bypass some of the conservation questions currently being examined in the coupled system.

The explicit representation of the water table may also be of considerable value in modeling wetlands either on its own or as a stepping stone to more sophisticated couplings and climate simulatioins. Preliminary discussions were made to represent a SSiB run over the Prairie Coteau during the wet up period in the early 1990’s. Both Sud and Mocko were very interested in the prairie wetland problem and are interested in interaction with us on the problem in the context of global modeling once a strategy is fleshed out (as was the case with Marshal Space Flight Center).

Secondly, I met with Ted Engman, the head of the Hydrology Branch. (Engman is retiring at the end of the year. No specific replacement has been named yet but Ted mentioned Ken Mitchell at NOAA HQ) Specifically, details on the SoDak NASA-EPSCoR program was discussed and, like Mocko and Sud (and most other people with whom I’ve discussed the SD wetlands), he too was both interested in out program and previously unaware of it. Unfortunately due to the Land Surface Hydrology Program meeting, most of the staff as off-site at a related meetings [as is often the case with these meetings]. Specific investigators in Engman’s branch, namely Paul Houser, Mike Jasinski and Charron Birkett, were already contacted at the main LSHP meeting. Engman & Sud is circulating a copies of our proposal and I’ll be sending him digital copies of the hydrology "white paper."