International Workshop on:ECO-HYDROLOGY OF SEMIARID ENVIRONMENTS: CONFRONTING MATHEMATICAL MODELS WITH ECOSYSTEM COMPLEXITYSunday-Wednesday 19-22 May 2013Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong”. Richard P. Feynman

INVITATION and PROGRAM

SPEAKERS

Shmuel Assouline

Roni Avissar

Paolo D’Odorico

Simone Fatichi

Gabriel Katul

Sonia Kefi

Jeff McDonnell

Ehud Meron

Efrat Morin

Ran Nathan

Dani Or Ram Oren Jean-Yves Parlange

Marc Parlange

Amilcare-Porporato

Antonello Provenzale

Max Rietkerk

Ignacio Rodriguez-

Iturbe

Todd Scanlon

Shai Sela

John Selker Moshe Shachak

Uri Shavit Maxim Shoshany

Tal Svoray Sally Thompson

Scott Tyler Jost von Hardenberg

Dan Yakir Hezi Yizhaq

PROGRAM

workshop website

PROGRAM Day 1: Sunday 19.05.2013Arrival: BGU Hotel, Beer Sheva 19:00 Ice Breaker

Day 2: Monday 20.05.20138:30 Registration

9:00 Opening address: BGU officials

9:30 Presentation of the workshop : Tal Svoray

10:00 Session I: Eco-hydrological processes and vegetation patterns A Chair: Paolo D’Odorico

Moshe Shachak: The role of plants as ecosystem engineers in controlling eco-hydrological processes and resilience to global changesMax Rietkerk: Vegetation-environment feedbacks from local to global scales

Sonia Kefi: Assessing vegetation structure in Mediterranean drylands Simone Fatichi: Vegetation as a filter of interannual climate variability

Day 1 | Day 2

PROGRAM

workshop website

Paolo D’Odorico: Eco-hydrological patterns and processes induced by environmental fluctuations

14:00 Session II: Eco-hydrological processes and vegetation patterns B Chair: Roni Avissar

Ignacio Rodríguez-Iturbe: Vegetation patterns in semiarid river basins: drivers of organization and metabolic implicationRan Nathan: A connectivity-map approach to model plant invasive spread in heterogeneous environmentsSally Thompson: Evolution of vegetation spatial patterns in drylands: interaction of dispersal processes and climatic variation

Tal Svoray: Patch-size distribution and hydrological fluxes in real semi arid hillslopes

Amilcare Porporato: Sustainable use of soil and water resources in semiarid, managed ecosystemsRoni Avissar: Using the Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Model (OLAM) to assess the sensitivity of semiarid regions ecohydrology to climate variations

Day 2

PROGRAM

workshop website

Day 3: Tuesday 21.05.20139:00 Round table discussion: How far are we from understanding the eco- hydrological processes that determine vegetation patterns? Chair : Amilcare Porporato Paolo D’Odorico, Jost von Hardenberg

10:30 Session III: Flow processes and water regime Chair: Jean-Yves ParlangeJean-Yves Parlange: Infiltration in soils with a saturated surfaceDani Or: What controls evaporation dynamics from porous surfaces?Jeffrey J. McDonnell: Two water worlds? Isotope evidence shows that trees and streams return different pools of water to the hydrosphere in seasonally-arid environmentsMarc Parlange: Ecohydrology of the Savanna region in Burkina Faso

Shmuel Assouline: Impact of soil surface sealing on the ecohydrology of semiarid areas

Shai Sela: Water-vegetation feedbacks in sealed environments Uri Shavit: Canopy edge flows

Day 2 | Day 3

PROGRAM

workshop website

15:30 Round table discussion: To harness the theory of flow processes to water available for vegetation Chair :Dani Or Marc Parlange, John Selker

17:00 Student's poster session

Day 4: Wednesday 22.05.20139:00 Session IV: Mathematical modeling in ecohydrology Chair: Antonello Provenzale

Ehud Meron: Diversity and dynamics of water-limited vegetation land scapes: universal and non-universal aspects Jost von Hardenberg: Vegetation patterns and evapotranspiration fluxes in drylands Antonello Provenzale: Climate-vegetation interaction in water-limited environ-mentsHezi Yizhaq: The role of spatial heterogeneity of soil depth in vegetation pat-tern formation

Day 3 | Day 4

PROGRAM

workshop website

11:30 Session V: Coupling water to carbon fluxes and biomass Chair: Dan YakirRam Oren: Spatiotemporal feedback between canopy conductance and soil moisture at the scale of individuals reflects native and imposed variation in canopy densityGaby Katul: The economics of leaf-gas exchange in a fluctuating environment and their upscaling to the canopy-level using turbulent transport theoriesDan Yakir: Contributions of soil properties tree hydraulics and leaf physiology to the ecohydrology of a semi-arid pine forestTodd Scanlon: Flux-variance similarity theory applied to water vapor and carbon dioxide exchange in a semiarid ecosystem

14:30 Session VI: Novel experimental methods Chair: Maxim ShoshanyJohn Selker: Observations of complex ecohydrologic processes at appropriate temporal and spatial scales with Fiber opticsMaxim Shoshany: Water use efficiency, patch pattern properties and biomass in shrublands across Mediterranean climatic gradientScott W. Tyler: The eco-hydrology of the devils hole pupfish: when the Ecology and the Hydrology won’t agree to the same story

Day 4

PROGRAM

workshop website

Efrat Morin: Desert rain storms and flash floods: Insights gained from space-time characterization and modeling of convective rain cells

17:30 Round table discussion: Confronting mathematical models with field observations Chair: Ehud Meron Ignacio Rodríguez-Iturbe, Jeffrey McDonnell

18:30 Gaby Katul: Closing Shmuel Assouline: Presenting Special Issue in WRR

20:00 Gala Dinner

Day 4

REGISTRATION

workshop website

We are pleased to invite you to join the conference as a participant

Registration is open until April 15 at noon Participants can attend all lectures and present a poster

Registration Form

For further information see the workshop website

Guidelines and recommendations for poster design

For more information you are invited to contact: Rachel Zimmermann at geoconf@bgu.ac.il

Looking forward to hear from youTal Svoray Shmuel Assouline Gabriel Katul

The Scientific Committee