A major challenge for the Environmental Science community is predicting future changes in the terrestrial water cycle and their impact on water resources. International organizations like the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) acknowledge that human activities significantly influence the continental water cycle and must be considered in future climate projections. The Land surface Interactions with the Atmosphere over the Iberian Semi-arid Environment (LIAISE) project, under the international HYdrological cycle in the Mediterranean Experiment (HyMeX) initiative, aims to improve understanding of land-atmosphere-hydrology interactions in Spain’s semi-arid Ebro basin, which is an important “bread basket” region where intensive irrigation contrasts with natural dry zones. The LIAISE study area spans the Catalan counties of Urgell and Pla d’Urgell within the Ebro basin in northeastern Spain, a region with a hot, semi-arid Mediterranean climate. It features a stark contrast between a vast, intensively irrigated area and the drier natural zone to the east. The primary water supply comes from artificial reservoirs in the Pyrenees to the north, transported through a heavily modified river and canal network. Anthropization impacts hydrology and climate interactions, but data limitations have hindered model progress. With expanding irrigation and climate threats to agriculture, improved observations—both field-based and remote sensing—are crucial for understanding land processes and their effects on the water cycle. In recent years, land surface and atmospheric observation capabilities have advanced, as well as the variety, quality and resolution of remotely-sensed data, to help improve our understanding of key natural and anthropogenic land processes and the subsequent feed-backs with the boundary layer and basin-scale hydrological cycle. One of the main goals of LIAISE is to leverage such advances to improve our understanding and prediction of anthropogenic impacts on the energy and water cycles.
The overall goal of this meeting is to bring together researchers specializing in estimating the various components of the surface water and energy cycles experimentally using in-situ observations, via remote sensing data and/or models, from the leaf to the regional scale. The emphasis will be on semi-arid bread-basket regions, notably those with anthropogenically-enhanced surface heterogeneity due to irrigation, crop variability and other activities. The session themes focus on surface energy budget and hydrological processes, atmospheric boundary layer-surface interactions and their potential impact on mesoscale to regional scale atmospheric circulations, and on the basin-scale hydrological cycle with a focus on anthropogenic impacts and processes. GEWEX aims to bring together experts from diverse disciplines to discuss key questions and methods to allow the community to communicate in an efficient manner, and to advance science related to the effects of anthropization on the hydrological and energy cycles. We encourage presentations on results from observational studies, modeling experiments and evaluation, plans for future projects which will leverage the LIAISE dataset and current research, and finally lessons learned from the LIAISE project.
The agenda will become available at the second half of April 2025.
Registration
Registration will open in mid-March.
Abstract Submission
To submit your abstract (max. 500 words) click here. Deadline is March 14, 2025.
Fees
The registration fee covers all coffee breaks, 2 lunches and an ice-breaker on Thursday night at International Conference Center (CIC), Météo-France, Toulouse
The 2nd LIAISE Conference will take place at:
Météo-France
Centre International de Conférences (CIC)
42, avenue Gaspard Coriolis
31057 Toulouse cedex 1
France
For additional Travel information, including Visa requirements, visit Venue & Travel.
LIAISE Project: https://www.hymex.fr/liaise/
LIAISE Database: https://liaise.aeris-data.fr/
