EGU2020-4283
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-4283
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Freeze and Harlan (1969) Blueprint for a physically-based, digitally-simulated hydrologic response model

Craig T. Simmons1, Philip Brunner2, Rene Therrien3, and Edward A. Sudicky4,5
Craig T. Simmons et al.
  • 1College of Science and Engineering & National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia (craig.simmons@flinders.edu.au)
  • 2Centre of Hydrogeology and Geothermics, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
  • 3Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada
  • 4Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
  • 5Aquanty Inc., 564 Weber St. N., Unit 2, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

The year 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of a pioneering publication in hydrology. Allan Freeze and Richard Harlan published their Blueprint for a physically-based, digitally-simulated hydrologic response model (Freeze and Harlan, 1969) in Journal of Hydrology. Their vision was for a futuristic model that would integrate key processes and compartments in the hydrologic cycle: precipitation, evapotranspiration, overland runoff, infiltration and groundwater exchange (into and out of) surface water bodies, such as rivers and lakes. Today, the original Blueprint is a reality.

We recently published a paper in Journal of Hydrology to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of the original Blueprint paper (Simmons et al., 2019). In this talk, we present an overview of, and highlights from, this paper.

Through personal communications with Allan Freeze, we present the history and genesis of the Blueprint paper. We reflect on the uptake of the Blueprint into modern hydrology, the development of numerical models that enabled this, and the range of challenges being tackled by these models. Finally, we consider challenges and opportunities for the future of this area of modelling and hydrologic science.

 

Reference

Simmons, C.T., Brunner, P., Therrien, R., and Sudicky, E.A., 2019. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Freeze and Harlan (1969) Blueprint for a physically-based, digitally-simulated hydrologic response model, Journal of Hydrology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.124309  

How to cite: Simmons, C. T., Brunner, P., Therrien, R., and Sudicky, E. A.: Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Freeze and Harlan (1969) Blueprint for a physically-based, digitally-simulated hydrologic response model, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-4283, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-4283, 2020.

This abstract will not be presented.