
Ronny Berndtsson
Professor, Dep Director, MECW Dep Scientific Coordinator

Nonlinear dynamics and chaos in hydrology
Author
Summary, in English
During the last two decades, applications of nonlinear dynamic and chaos theories to hydrologic systems and processes have been on the rise. Early applications of these theories focused mainly on the investigation and prediction of chaos in rainfall and river flow dynamics. Subsequent years witnessed their applications for other purposes (e.g. data disaggregation, missing data estimation, reconstruction of system equations) and to other processes (e.g. rainfall-runoff, sediment transport). More recently, additional inroads have been made through their applications to the problems of scaling, groundwater contamination, parameter estimation, and catchment classification. The outcomes of these studies are certainly encouraging, especially considering the exploratory stage of the concepts in hydrologic sciences. The objectives of this chapter are: (1) to provide a comprehensive review of the applications of nonlinear dynamic and chaos theories in hydrology; and (2) to discuss the hope and scope for the future and also the challenges that lie ahead. In regards to the challenges, particular emphasis is given to discussing the need to improve our understanding of these largely less-understood concepts and to find appropriate ways for integrating them with other concepts that are already in existence or emerging. With the clear recognition that none of the existing one-sided ‘extreme-view’ modeling approaches is capable of solving the hydrologic problems, an urgent call for a balanced ‘middle-ground’ approach that can integrate different methods is also made.
Department/s
- Division of Water Resources Engineering
Publishing year
2010-01-01
Language
English
Pages
411-461
Publication/Series
Advances in Data-Based Approaches for Hydrologic Modeling and Forecasting
Document type
Book chapter
Publisher
World Scientific Publishing
Topic
- Oceanography, Hydrology, Water Resources
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 9789814307987
- ISBN: 9814307971
- ISBN: 9789814307970