Advancing Long-Term River and Floodplain Modeling: Forecasting Fluvial Geomorphology Behavior Through Time
Dr. Virginia Smith is an Associate Professor of Water Resources in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Villanova University
Abstract: Rivers and their adjacent floodplains play a critical role in shaping landscapes and have historically been the center of human civilization, but their dynamic nature poses signifcant challenges for societies. Effective planning and management depend on a profound understanding of long-term geomorphological behavior on centennial or millennial timescales. River hydrographs, which both describe hydrologic regimes and play a critical role in Earth surface processes, are typically based on limited recorded discharge series that span only a few decades, making it difficult to simulate river dynamics over longer timescales. The absence of robust methodologies for generating representative long-term hydrographs is a fundamental challenge for understanding the impact of climate on river dynamics. Further, geomorphologic processes within fluvial systems result from complex interactions among hydrologic regimes, bed materials, topography, land cover, and basin properties. While physics-based models provide a robust framework for reach-scale simulations, their high computational demands limit simulation length and spatial accuracy. In response to these challenges, this study presents 1) a novel approach for constructing multi-century hydrographs that conserve the statistical and stochastic characteristics of observed data, and 2) new techniques to enhance computational efficiency, leveraging deep learning to capture complex hydrodynamics and morphodynamic processes. These advancements enable rapid, continuous spatiotemporal predictions of water depth, flow velocity, and bed change responses to flood events. Ultimately, this creates a powerful geomorphological framework that represents a paradigm shift in long-term hydrologic and morphological modeling, paving the way for forecasting river and floodplain responses to climate change over multi-century timescales.
About: Dr. Smith is an Associate Professor of Water Resources in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Villanova University. Her research has focused on fluvial morphology, urban hydrology, and sediment transport dynamics, leveraging tools including physics-based computational models, artificial intelligence, and remote sensing. Dr. Smith has overseen and worked on a diverse collection of water and natural resource projects across the US and around the world, including projects in Asia, Africa, the South Pacific, and Afghanistan, and is a participant in the National Academy of Sciences’ Frontiers Program. She has leveraged her experiences in her research to work across disciplines to address major challenges facing the management of surface water. She received her PhD in Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), and she received a master’s and bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering from UT and Georgia Institute of Technology. She is the winner the of the Early Career Award from the University Council on Water Resources (2020), the Villanova College of Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award (2021), the ASCE Excellence in Engineering Education Award (2021), the Meyer Award for Innovation (2023), and the Villanova University Award for Meritorious Teaching and Mentorship (2024).