HESS Opinions: Beyond the long-term water balance: evolving Budyko's supply–demand framework for the Anthropocene towards a global synthesis of land-surface fluxes under natural and human-altered watersheds

Abstract

Abstract. Global hydroclimatic conditions have been substantially altered over the past century by anthropogenic influences that arise from the warming global climate and from local/regional anthropogenic disturbances. Traditionally, studies have used coupling of multiple models to understand how land-surface water fluxes vary due to changes in global climatic patterns and local land-use changes. We argue that because the basis of the Budyko framework relies on the supply and demand concept, the framework could be effectively adapted and extended to quantify the role of drivers – both changing climate and local human disturbances – in altering the land-surface response across the globe. We review the Budyko framework, along with these potential extensions, with the intent of furthering the applicability of the framework to emerging hydrologic questions. Challenges in extending the Budyko framework over various spatio-temporal scales and the use of global datasets to evaluate the water balance at these various scales are also discussed.

Increase in Compound Drought and Heatwaves in a Warming World

“…We investigated the possible role of aridity on the asymmetric (heterogeneous) behavior of CDHW metrics. The background aridity has a potential influence on the evaporation and land-atmospheric interactions (McVicar et al, 2012;Mukherjee et al, 2020;Sankarasubramanian et al, 2020;Seneviratne et al, 2010), that directly controls the drought and heatwaves. The influence on evaporation is primarily defined based on the concept of water-limited and energy-limited regimes (Budyko & Mikhail, 1971;D.…”

How is Baseflow Index (BFI) impacted by water resource management practices?

“…tains surface flows particularly during relatively dry periods and droughts (Smakhtin, 2001;Miller et al, 2016) because it supports ecological flows and ecosystem functioning (Poff et al, 1997;Boulton, 2003) and is a factor in regulating streamflow quality and temperature (Jordan et al, 1997;Gomez-Velez et al, 2015;Hare et al, 2021). It integrates the outcomes of a wide range of natural and human-influenced surface and subsurface catchment processes (Price et al, 2011;Gnann et al, 2019) that include geomorphological controls related to surface topography (Santhi et al, 2008) and soil processes (Vivoni et al, 2007;Price et al, 2011;Singh et al, 2019;Yao et al, 2021) and (hydro)geological processes that control baseflow (Longobardi and Villani, 2008;Bloomfield et al, 2009;Kuentz et al, 2017;Carlier et al, 2018). Land use and land cover (LULC) change may also have profound effects on baseflow generation (Zhang and Schilling, 2006;Wang et al, 2014), including effects of changing forest cover and agriculture (Juckem et al, 2008;Ahiablame et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2017) and urbanization (Simmons and Reynolds, 1982;Chang, 2007;Dow, 2007;McGrane, 2016).…”

Hydrological Basis of the Budyko Curve: Data‐Guided Exploration of the Mediating Role of Soil Moisture

“…On the application side, the Budyko curve has also been used as a constraint on predictions by process-based hydrological models (Greve et al, 2020;Milly, 1994). Sankarasubramanian et al (2020) have presented a review of recent advances in the interpretation and application of the Budyko framework and its future extension to address questions related to hydrologic and environmental changes.…”