This project will bring together an interdisciplinary team in theoretical hydrology to address the problem of defining rigorously the relation between macroscopic, catchment-scale parameters describing runoff generation, net recharge, or groundwater flow through scaling procedures applied to the non-linear mathematical description of the underlying, local-scale physics. The project objectives are: (1) To drive, using rigorous methods in the analysis of spatial data, a catchment-scale, process-based model of streamflow generation in systems that are highly variable at the local scale. (2) To develop improved methods of conditioning stochastic models of catchment-scale spatial variability. (3) To investigate the general consequences of scale-invariance in the local-scale velocity field for predictive models of subsurface water flows in heterogenous media. The results obtained will contribute to understanding the scale dependence and scale invariance of fundamental hydrologic processes as they are resolved from the field plot experiment to the regional or drainage-basin response.//
