Carly Delavau

IG Isotopes in Geosciences: Instrumentation and Applications

The 2014 Outstanding Student Poster (OSP) Award is awarded to Carly Delavau for the poster/PICO entitled:

North American precipitation isotope (δ¹⁸O) zones revealed in time series modelling of precipitation ¹⁸O across Canada and the northern United States (Delavau, C. J; Chun, K. P.; Stadnyk, T.; Birks, S. J.; Welker, J. M.)

I am a PhD student in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Manitoba, Canada, under the supervision of Dr. Tricia Stadnyk. My PhD research primarily focuses on the development of an isotopically-enabled hydrological model (isoWATFLOOD), specifically generating input data required to drive model simulations when no measurements exist. isoWATFLOOD needs measured compositions of oxygen-18 isotopes in precipitation (δ¹⁸O_ppt) for input, however across Canada these measurements are scarce. The poster we presented at EGU details the development of and preliminary results from fifteen multivariate regression models simulating monthly δ¹⁸O_ppt Isoscapes across Canada and the northern United States. Uncertainty was accounted for in two ways: 1) computation of prediction intervals for individual simulations, and 2) investigating multiple regionalizations of the study domain and assessing the resulting impact on model structure. Once finalized, select models will be imbedded into the isoWATFLOOD framework, and ensembles of gridded time series δ¹⁸O_ppt will be generated for select watershed modelling applications across Canada. The aforementioned modelling methodology allows for quantification of uncertainty in both the isotopic composition and quantity of streamflow simulations due to the uncertainty associated with the modelled δ¹⁸O_ppt input.