Guotao Cui

• PhD
• Research Assistant at University of California, Merced

This Special Issue is the second edition following the publication of the first Issue, “Yellow River Basin Management under Pressure: Present State, Restoration and Protection”, in 2021 [...]

To estimate snowpack water storage in mountain basins, this study presents a framework that couples a deep-learning long short-term memory (LSTM) model and a zonal bias-correction approach for assimilating ground snow observations. We explored the framework’s ability for snow water equivalent (SWE) mapping and forecasting in a domain, including the...

Ecological protection and high-quality development in the basin of the Yellow River, known as China’s “Mother River” and “the cradle of Chinese civilization”, have been receiving increasing attention because of the important role they play in China’s economic and social development, and its cultural heritage [...]

This study reports on a blending approach using snowpack measurements from a wireless‐sensor network, gauge precipitation, and atmospheric‐moisture data to estimate mountain precipitation amount and phase. We applied the approach in California's American River basin, using dense measurements from a network consisting of over 130 sensor nodes distri...

Feedbacks between the intertwined water and carbon cycles in semi‐arid mountain ecosystems can introduce large uncertainties into projections of carbon storage. In this study, we sought to understand the influence of key mechanisms on carbon balances, focusing on an ecosystem whose complex terrain and large interannual variability in precipitation...

Water availability in mountain forests affects vegetation response to drought, which in turn changes evapotranspiration (ET). We investigated water-balance indicators based on precipitation (P) minus ET to assess Mediterranean-climate forest vulnerability to multi-year droughts. We used the drought-vulnerable dense mixed-conifer forests of Californ...

This study associates the fuzzy multi-attribute decision making (FMADM) and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to assess the water resources carrying capacity and to tackle uncertain problems of multiple subsystems during its evaluation. For this purpose, the water resources carrying capacity evaluation index system is proposed, and the AHP-FMADM...

To provide complementary information on the hydrologically important rain-snow-transition elevation in mountain basins, this study provides two estimation methods using ground measurements from basin-scale wireless-sensor networks: one based on wet-bulb temperature (Twet), and the other based on snow-depth measurements of accumulation and ablation....

We estimate precipitation amounts in mixed rain-snow forested mountainous basins using data from a basin-scale distributed wireless-sensor network. A four-year study in the American River basin in California’s Sierra Nevada illustrated the method. Over 140 sensor nodes were strategically distributed in 14 sensor clusters across elevations from 1500...

The process-based DeNitrification-DeComposition (DNDC) model is widely used to quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Soil temperature is an important environmental factor affecting nitrous oxide (N2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, however, it is not well described in the original DNDC model due to seasonal snow cover in cold regions. This...

This study develops a new analytical model to simulate the infiltration and runoffwith a crust surface. The new model consists of two parts: (1) an infiltration capacity model using a linear rate-moisture relation (RMR) similar to the flux-concentration relation (FCR) for homogeneous soil, but considering the changing saturation over time at the in...

Core Ideas A new infiltration model based on characteristics of wetting front was developed. The model describes evolution of water content by ordinary differential equation. Infiltration rate is used as input, and wetting front profile and time are back‐solved. The model captures the evolution of wetting front and infiltration amount. This study...

Understanding infiltration into soils from rainfall events is important for many practical applications. The idea of time compression approximation (TCA) was proposed to simulate infiltration rate, which only requires the relationship between the potential infiltration rate (PIR) and potential cumulative infiltration (PCI). The TCA-based method can...

A Green-Ampt type model for sloping layered soils (GASLS) was developed to investigate infiltration processes. We introduced a factor c, which is the same for all layers and represents the ratio of the effective hydraulic conductivity over the saturated hydraulic conductivity. Guidelines to estimate the factor c were established based on 234 scenar...

Harmony issues are widespread in human society and nature. To analyze these issues, harmony theory has been proposed as the main theoretical approach for the study of interpersonal relationships and relationships between humans and nature. Therefore, it is of great importance to study harmony theory. After briefly introducing the basic concepts of...

In recent decades there was a change in water resources management from a sectoral to a multidisciplinary and integrated approach, which now has widespread acceptance as the foremost concept for a holistic management approach. In our January 2013 issue, the news article "IWRM education: e-learning module on Integrated Water Resources Management" by...

In recent decades, the Tarim River basin in northwestern China has seen intense confrontation between economic developmentand environmental protection. How to balance sustainable socioeconomic development and harmony between humans and water has been acritical issue facing local governments for many years. This study proposes a quantitative method...