Professor Zhi Li

Professor Zhi Li’s research interests is on assessing and regulating the impacts of environmental changes on hydrology. The first research area is related to the sustainability of subsurface water under changing environment. To understand the changes in subsurface water and the controlling factors, tracer method such as isotope and chloride is used to interpret the recharge mechanism and quantify the recharge rates. Further, combined with modeling work by HYDRUS-1D, the impacts of climate and land use change on subsurface water are quantified to give information for water resources management.

The second aspect is to quantify/project the effects of the past/future climate change on surface water and soil erosion both on hill slope and watershed scale. Modeling methods have been used, such as hydrological models (SWAT and WEPP), weather generators, and climate models (GCMs and RCMs). My main work is to solve the mismatch between the course resolution of GCM outputs (grid and monthly scale) and the high-resolution input requirement of hydrological models (station and daily scale). I am trying to develop some techniques for GCM downscaling. He has published more than 120 articles in nationally and Internationally. His google scholar citations     is 2966 and his h-index is 27.

The second aspect is to quantify/project the effects of the past/future climate change on surface water and soil erosion both on hill slope and watershed scale. Modeling methods have been used, such as hydrological models (SWAT and WEPP), weather generators, and climate models (GCMs and RCMs). My main work is to solve the mismatch between the course resolution of GCM outputs (grid and monthly scale) and the high-resolution input requirement of hydrological models (station and daily scale). I am trying to develop some techniques for GCM downscaling