Watershed expert to present new data and innovative concepts

2:38 p.m., April 25, 2011--Jeffrey J. McDonnell, the 2011 Birdsall-Dreiss Lecturer of the Geological Society of America, will discuss his new ideas conceptualizing runoff processes in headwater catchments at a talk in Room 102, Delaware Biotechnology Institute, on Tuesday, May 3, at 2 p.m.

McDonnell is University Distinguished Professor of Hydrology, Richardson Chair of Watershed Sciences and director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University.

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June 5: Blue Hen 5K

University of Delaware graduates planning to attend Alumni Weekend are encouraged to register for the annual Blue Hen 5K walk and run, which will be held Sunday morning, June 5.

June 6-9: Food and culture series

The 20th annual June Lecture Series at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UD in Wilmington will be held June 6-9. Titled 'June a la Carte,' this year's program focuses on great political documents, feminism, world politics and a Newark cuisine sampler.

• June 6-9: Food and culture series
• Through June 30: 'Saving White Clay Creek'
• July 22: WWE Heatwave Tour
• Through Sept. 16: Women of color in academia

Streamflow generation concepts have remained largely unchanged since the First International Hydrological Decade (1965–1974) despite numerous case studies from an ever-widening array of catchments. McDonnell’s talk examines the future of runoff conceptualization and advances a simple concept of subsurface "storage excess" and offers evidence in support of storage excess using field data from catchments distributed across a wide array of climate, geology, vegetation, and topographic conditions. These data show subsurface storage filling and then spilling is a simple concept that makes sense across many scales and may help explain runoff amount and timing, geographic and time source components, and residence time.

He addresses how such measures might be used for "gauging" the ungauged catchment as part of the IAHS Decade on Prediction in Ungauged Basins (2003–2012) and informing questions of "what to measure, in what order and why?" This lecture is intended for those interested in water resources, land use planning, hydrogeology and water quality.

The Birdsall Dreiss distinguished lectureship was first established in 1978 and honors the late John Manning Birdsall, a prominent geologist retired from the U.S. Geological Survey, and the late Shirley J. Dreiss, who was a faculty member in earth sciences at the University of California – Santa Cruz.

The May 3 talk is sponsored by the Delaware Environmental Institute.