Civil and Environmental Engineering - Master Calendar

Abstract
Rivers are dendritic and hierarchically organized systems. Flowing from headwaters to the outlet, rivers transport water, energy, and terrestrial materials, impacting humans and ecosystems. Understanding rivers, especially river discharge, as well as their dynamics and the controlling mechanisms, is critical to assess and manage the ecological and socioeconomic functionality of the entire river system in a changing world. However, such knowledge is often lacking due to the limited river monitoring systems in most places of the world. In this seminar, I will present a recent study in which we integrated primary satellite data and hydrologic models to comprehensively investigate the spatiotemporal distribution of daily river flow for ~2.9 million river reaches from 1984 to 2018 by creating the Global River Discharge Reanalysis (GRDR) dataset. Using GRDR, we found that river outlets were dominated by significant decreases in flow, whereas headwaters were 1.7 times more likely to have significantly increased flow than decreased. These changes result in a significant upstream shift in streamflow experienced by about 29% of the global land surface. We found the most changes in the smallest streams in our study: increases in erosion potential (approximately 5% increase in stream power), flood frequency (approximately 42% increase in 100-year floods), and likely nutrient dynamics (altered seasonal flow regimes). 

Bio
Dr. Feng is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. She specializes in terrestrial hydrology with a particular focus on river systems. Her research aims to improve the quantification of river water quantity and quality and to advance our understanding of complex river dynamics. Dr. Feng develops projects that integrate satellite remote sensing, process-based models, and machine learning to address critical challenges in freshwater resources and ecosystem health. Dr. Feng has led multiple projects funded by federal agencies as a Principal Investigator to support interdisciplinary projects that bridge hydrology, environmental science, and data innovation. She is a recipient of the NASA Early Career Investigator Award. Her work has been published in leading journals, including Science, Nature Communications, and Water Resources Research, and has been featured by major media outlets, including CNN.