Nathalie Voisin

Research

team member of the 2009 Washington Climate Change Impact Assessment. Impacts of climate change on the hydrology of the Washington State (Elsner et al. 2009) , and impact of climate change on the water resources in the Puget Sound Region (Vano et al. 2009a) and in the Yakima Valley (Vano et al. 2009b).

Effect of Land Use Change and Climate Change on the Zambeze River Basin water resources

Road Erosion in the LowPass watershed (DHSVM) in collaboration with the USDA Forest Service, Boise ID.

Implications of Seasonal to Interannual Covariability of Pacific Northwest-California Climate for Hydropower Generation ( Sep 2003 - May 2005)
See Voisin, N., A. F. Hamlet, L. P. Graham, D. W. Pierce, T. P. Barnett, and D. P. Lettenmaier, 2006: The role of climate forecasts in western U.S. power planning. Journal of Applied Meteorology Vol. 45, No. 5, pp 653-673.

Comparison of GOES-derived surface albedo and VIC surface albedo (2003 - early 2004)

Effects of Climate Change on the Hydrology and Water Resources of the Colorado River Basin.
See Christensen, N.S., Wood, A.W., Voisin, N., Lettenmaier, D.P. and R.N. Palmer, Climate Change , January 2004 , vol. 62.

Implementation of a dynamic maximum infiltration rate
Originally, there was only a static maximum infiltration rate in DHSVM. Basically, all the precipitation was infiltrating until the maximum rate was reached. Excess water was considered as surface runoff to be routed to the downstream cell.
This simplification was not appropriate for the mass wasting algorythm developed by Doten et al (2006). The new infiltration scheme is a dynamic infiltration, which sets a maximum infiltration threshold varying with antecedant conditions ( soil moisture, previous rain, etc). The threshold is smaller when it hasn't rained for a while, and is larger when it has rained recently. Then water infiltrates according to Darcy's law. The new infiltration scheme first allows a better representation of the peak flows after storm events, then also allows to have a better representation of the actual soil moisture during storm events for the mass wasting algorythm. See report here.