Celebrating Eric Wood's advances in large domain hydrologic modeling

Eric F. Wood was a pioneer in large-domain hydrologic modeling. Building on his work on hydrologic scaling in the 1980s, in the 1990s and 2000s Eric led the community in process-based approaches to hydrologic modeling across large geographical domains. Together with Dennis Lettenmaier, Eric developed the open-source Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC), which became a leading large-domain hydrologic model used by dozens of research groups around the world. The capabilities of VIC advanced by Eric and Dennis' students and postdocs included improved representation of hydrologic scaling relationships, advanced representation of cold region hydrologic processes, new capabilities for large-domain streamflow forecasting, and understanding the sensitivity of large river basins to climate variability and change. Eric's work in leading community model inter-comparison projects (PILPS) and community large-domain modeling studies (GEWEX/GCIP and GEWEX/GAPP) advanced understanding of the limitations of large-domain hydrologic models and helped identify effective strategies for model improvement. It is clear that most large-domain hydrologic models that are in use today are heavily influenced by the legacy of VIC. As the community continues to advance in developing interdisciplinary approaches to Earth System modeling (integrating advances from terrestrial and aquatic ecology and the social sciences), explicitly representing a broader range of natural and human processes, it is increasingly clear that the community is indebted to the contributions of Eric F. Wood.