In search of a foundational set of water principles

Axiomatizing and integrating water knowledge from the fields of climate science, ecology, hydrogeology, and permaculture

When I first got into the water field, I was inspired by an example from the sustainability field that both helped provide a foundational understanding of the field, and helped build a movement. In 1989, Karl Henrik-Robert, a Swedish doctor, gathered many scientists together to work on figuring out a set of axioms about sustainability, called the Natural Step. The four axioms they came up with, help give clarity to the sustainability field. The set of axioms served as the foundation for a set of courses about sustainability that was taught to many businesses, governments, nonprofits, and communities.

I wanted a foundational set of axioms for the regenerative water field.

The water cycle is a very complex process, which involves many chains of cause and effect, many interacting feedback loops, and a multitude of phenomena. Understanding it requires integrating knowledge from a diverse set of sciences - climate science, ecology, and hydrogeology, and a diverse range of methodologies from indigenous practices, permaculture, to natural sequence farming. Simplifying it into a small set of principles requires figuring which of the hundreds of water phenomena are the most important and foundational to feature.

About 16 months ago I started gathering a small group to figure out the axioms of the regenerative water field. You can see some of our initial efforts in our weekly discussion sessions about at the water principles, here, here, here and here (I’ve had people tell me they learnt a lot about the water cycle just by listening to these videos of our water principle brainstorming sessions).

After a few months, I felt stuck on the principles project because we did not have a deep enough understanding about the atmospheric parts of the water equation, and because hard to figure out the relative significance of different water phenomena.

Now a year later, with more knowledge and experience, I have returned to the project.

I combed through piles of articles, videos, textbooks and research papers, working to distill their knowledge, and to see how they connect with other pieces of knowledge. I went for long walks in the mountains whilst I rolled the ideas over in my mind, trying to understand how to assemble them into a larger coherent picture, and then to distill this integral picture into a succinct form.

After much mulling, editing, molding, and assembling, here are a set of

WATER PRINCIPLES

1. Groundwater, surface water, and atmospheric water are coupled by land cover.

2. Groundwater dampens river and soil moisture variability, which in turn dampens rain variability.

3. Land cover and geomorphology modulate continental water amount, rivers, floods, and sea-level rise. Continental water, rivers and floods modulate land cover and geomorphology.

4. Wind modulates vegetation by influencing distribution of rain. Vegetation modulates wind through friction, heat, and convection.

5. Soil moisture and vegetation hydration modulate droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and floods. Droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and floods modulate soil and vegetation.

6. Animals affect vegetation and soil. Vegetation and soil affect surface water distribution. Surface water distribution affects animal geography and biodiversity.

7. Vegetation modulates heat through evapotranspiration of water and cloud formation. Heat impacts vegetation.

8. Heat at the earth’s surface can transform into latent heat via vegetation evapotranspiration , ascend via convection, and radiate into space via thermal radiation without getting absorbed by greenhouse gases below.

9. Ecological succession is in feedback loop with water cycle evolution.

10. Vegetation, soil absorbency, and groundwater affects the size frequency, power law distribution of floods, droughts and wildfire.

[ If you would like to get a poster of these Water Principles to put on your wall, please go to my artist webpage at https://fineartamerica.com/featured/water-principles-alpha-lo.html ]

An explanation of these principles:

1. Groundwater, surface water, and atmospheric water are coupled by land cover

Land cover is defined as the physical material at the surface of the earth - soil, vegetation, bare ground, asphalt etc.

The small water cycle (or precipitation recycling), is the process by which rain falls to the earth, and then is evapotranspired by the vegetation and soil back up to the atmosphere, where it can then form rain again. The ability of the vegetation and soil to slow and absorb the rainfall impacts the magnitude of the small water cycle, and how well the surface water and atmospheric water are coupled.

There is also a water cycle where the rain falls to the earth, seeps into the aquifers, and then is brought up by tree roots and mycelia, evapotranspires back up to the atmosphere, where it can form rain again. This process has yet to have an official name, I call this the high-low water cycle. The soil quality, tree roots, and mycelia determine the magnitude of this cycle, and how well the groundwater, surface water, and atmospheric water are coupled.

The small water cycle and the high-low water cycle are thus coupled via land cover.

2. Groundwater dampens river and soil moisture variability, which in turn dampens rain variability.

There is significantly more groundwater than there is water at the surface of the earth. The groundwater seeps out and keeps rivers running into the dry season. If there is a lack of groundwater, rivers oscillate more extremely between dry and wet, ; river flow variability thus increases.

Tree roots and mycelia help draw up groundwater to hydrate the soil in the dry season. If there is a lack of groundwater, the soil oscillates more extremely between dry and wet; the hydration variability thus increases.

If the soil and landscape is hydrated into the dry season, then evapotranspiration will be greater, which leads to more rain in the dry season. Tree roots can push down excess water during the wet season, lessening evapotranspiration, which leads to less rain in the wet season. The extremes of rainfall, dry and wet are lessened; rainfall variability is lessened.

In the Amazon, researchers found the amount of groundwater modulated surface moisture by 5-40%, and affected evapotranspiration by 10%. [ref 1]

We can think of groundwater as being a memory for surface hydration. And surface hydration as being a memory for atmospheric hydration. The time scale of groundwater is long. The time scale of surface hydration is medium. And the time scale of rain is short.

In a scientific paper [ref 2] discussing this, Torre and Miguel-Macho write “The water table depth is the main indicator of the intensity of groundwater–soil moisture coupling and consequently of how much memory the long timescales of variation of groundwater can induce in soil moisture”, and the continue with “Soil moisture memory refers to the persistence of wet or dry anomalies in the soil after the atmospheric conditions that caused them have passed…..if there is high land–atmosphere coupling, that is, if the conditions of the soil can have a significant impact on atmospheric dynamics, then soil moisture memory can influence weather conditions.”

Another way to think about this axiom is that ‘Long term groundwater modulates medium term surface water variability modulates short term atmospheric water variability.’

3. Land cover modulates continental water amount, rivers, floods, and sea-level rise. Continental water, rivers and floods modulate land cover.

Vegetation, soil, and earthworks can slow and absorb rain, which affects flood frequency downslope, and affects how quickly water runs off back to the sea. The more water slows above and below ground, the more total continental water there is, and the less that goes into sea.

Vegetation, soil, and earthworks help guide water into aquifers below. That water then seeps out slowly and can keep streams replenished into the dry season.

4. Wind modulates vegetation by influencing distribution of rain. Vegetation modulates wind through friction, heat, and convection.

Wind is the way water vapor gets transported around in the atmosphere.

Trees can create friction, that creates turbulence and convection in the atmosphere that slows the winds down enough, so that water vapor molecules can nucleate to form rain. [3]

Vegetation affects heat fluxes, which in turn affects where winds blow.

5. Soil moisture and vegetation hydration modulate droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and floods. Droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and floods modulate soil and vegetation.

More soil and vegetation moisture increases evapotranspiration which often leads to more rain. More evapotranspiration leads to more cooling and less heat waves. More evapotranspiration leads to more humid winds leads to less wildfires. More soil moisture means less wildfires. More absorbent soil leads to less floods.

Intensely hot wildfires can create a waxy substance on soil, that does not allow rain to infiltrate, which then leads to more floods. More floods can wash away topsoil, which means less rain infiltrates into the land, meaning less small water cycles and more drought. Less rain, means less evapotranspiration cooling, which means more heatwaves.

There axiom is conveying the idea that there is an ever worsening drought-heatwave-fire-flood cycle, unless ecorestoration efforts are made. The drought-heatwave-fire-flood cycle is a concept that needs to enter more into the climate discussion.

6. Animals affect vegetation and soil. Vegetation and soil affect surface water distribution. Surface water distribution affects animal geography and biodiversity.

Different animals have different affects on vegetation and soil. Heavy animals can help trample seeds into soil. Prairie dogs and ants dig tunnels into soil which let in water. Dung beetles and worms create more water absorbent soil. Birds spread seed to gro

The vegetation and soil then affect the distribution of water, which affects where animals locate themselves.

7. Vegetation modulates heat through evapotranspiration of water and cloud formation. Heat impacts vegetation.

Vegetation evapotranspire water which leads to a cooling of the land. The conversion of liquid water to water vapor transforms surface heat into latent heat.

That water vapor can condense to form clouds which both reflects solar radiation and also trap heat beneath it. Lower clouds tend to cool earth. Higher clouds tend to warm earth. Forests tend to create lower clouds.

8. Heat at the earth’s surface can transform into latent heat via vegetation evapotranspiration, ascend via convection, and radiate into space via thermal radiation without getting absorbed by greenhouse gases below.

The evapotranspired water vapor can be carried upwards by convection, where it then condenses releasing heat energy. Some of that heat can then give off thermal radiation that escapes into outer space . Thermal radiation released above lower greenhouse gas layers has a larger percentage of it reaching outer space than thermal radiation released at lower altitudes. This leads to a cooling of the earth .

9. Ecological succession is in feedback loop with water cycle evolution

The amount of rain and moisture in soil affects which plants grow at each stage of ecological succession. These plants in turn affect the water cycle. Plants that can grow into barren dirt are pioneer species which help to increase the ability of the earth to absorb water, which in turn, makes it easier for plants that need richer and wetter soil to grow.

10. Vegetation, soil absorbency, and groundwater affects the size frequency, power law distribution of floods, droughts and wildfire.

Earthquakes exhibit a power law. As the size of earthquakes goes up by a certain amount the frequency of that size of earthquake goes down by a certain amount, no matter size of the earthquake.

Power laws means that very large earthquakes will occur. There is a certain probability that earthquakes that are 10 times or 100 times larger than that of more common small earthquakes will happen. By contrast, height distribution of humans does not follow a power law. We do not have humans who are 10 times or 100 times the height of humans.

Floods [4] , fires, and drought [5] frequency follow power laws.

The exponent of the power law can be affected by soil absorbency, vegetation and groundwater. Eg. Soil absorbency can affect how large floods get, vegetation affects drought frequency, and groundwater affects rainfall and wildfires.

This is related to the self-organized criticality behavior of natural disasters, and how they are being driven by nonequilibrium thermodynamic processes.

More to come about these power laws and self organized criticality, in upcoming newsletter editions, a phenomena that is very important for the scientists, and for humans who have to live with the natural disasters, to understand.

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Interested to hear your feedback on this set of water principles. And stay tuned for further sets of water principles, in upcoming editions of this newsletter.

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References

1. Martinez, J. Alejandro, Francina Dominguez, and Gonzalo Miguez-Macho. "Impacts of a groundwater scheme on hydroclimatological conditions over southern South America." Journal of Hydrometeorology 17, no. 11 (2016): 2959-2978.

2. Martínez-de la Torre, A. and Miguez-Macho, G.: Groundwater influence on soil moisture memory and land–atmosphere fluxes in the Iberian Peninsula, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 4909–4932, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-4909-2019, 2019 https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/23/4909/2019/

3. Martinez, J. Alejandro, and Francina Dominguez. "Sources of atmospheric moisture for the La Plata River basin." Journal of Climate 27, no. 17 (2014): 6737-6753

4. Bruce D. Malamud, Donald L. Turcotte, The applicability of power-law frequency statistics to floods, Journal of Hydrology, Volume 322, Issues 1–4, 2006, Pages 168-180 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2005.02.032. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169405001125)

5. R.F.S. Andrade, H.J. Schellnhuber, M. Claussen, Analysis of rainfall records: possible relation to self-organized criticality, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Volume 254, Issues 3–4, 1998, Pages 557-568, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-4371(98)00057-0. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437198000570)