Dr. Adam Wei

The following research is currently underway:

Forest disturbance can significantly affect streamflow by altering its pattern, magnitude and quality. However, the majority of these conclusions have been based on small watersheds (<100 km²) with much less attention to large watersheds (>1000 km²). Nevertheless, many environmental issues have cumulative effects and operate at large spatial scales. Watershed managers and planners are eagerly seeking scientific information on large watersheds to support sustainable resources management.
Current research focuses on partitioning relative contributions of forest changes and climatic variability to hydrology and assessing cumulative hydrological effects of forest changes in large, forested watersheds.

As previous studies normally treated large watersheds as “black boxes”, they would not lead to the understanding of underlying mechanisms and processes which govern the cumulative hydrological responses to forest disturbance in large watersheds. Thus, critical research need is to assess how forest disturbance cumulatively influences hydrology over different spatial and temporal scales. To address this question, Adam’s team uses a nested watershed approach in the Similkameen River watershed (containing 9 nested and gauged sub-watersheds) located in the Southern Interior of BC as an example to study the cumulative effects of forest disturbance on hydrology.
The study is funded by NSERC (2015-2019).

This research focuses on how reforestation affects forest carbon and water couplings across different spatial scales (tree, forest stand and watershed levels). Previous research has placed an emphasis on forest carbon and water coupling at an individual spatial scale, with rare attention to cross-scale comparisons. Various approaches including experiments and modeling will be used.
This collaborative research between UBC and Ecora is funded by NSERC CRD (2016-2019).

This project addresses the impacts on water supply in association with future climate changes and forest disturbance in several nested watersheds of the Similkameen River basin, which is located in the Southern interior of BC. Work has just been completed for the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen.
This research supports local communities to manage future water supply and environmental protection.