Ying Fan Reinfelder

Assistant Professor
Rm.340, Wright Labs, Busch Campus
Phone: (732) 445-2649
Fax: (732) 445-3374

[AND]


Rm.344, ENRS Building, Cook Campus
Phone: (732) 932-9800 X-6212
Fax: (732) 932-8644
Email: yingfan@rci.rutgers.edu

Education

• B.S., Beijing Institute of Civil Engineering
• M.S., University of Utah
• Ph.D., Utah State University
• Postdoc, MIT
• Postdoc, Princeton University

Teaching

• Undergraduate: Hydrogeology
• Undergraduate: Hydrologic Processes
• Graduate: Groundwater Modeling

Research Interests

My first project is to investigate the role of the groundwater reservoir in the terrestrial water cycle - its link to soil moisture and river flow and hence continental climate dynamics. Through analyzing observations and constructing and employing process-based regional climate-hydrologic models, we have found that the groundwater reservoir is an important component of the water cycle, imparting spatial organization and temporal memory in soil moisture, and ultimately affecting the organization of rainfall and subsequent land-atmosphere feedbacks.

My second project is to reconstruct the Earth's hydrologic cycle in the past 21k years, using an integrated hydrologic modeling approach and constrained by paleoproxies. Without adequate representation of the groundwater process, it has been difficult for the climate models to simulate wetland conditions on Earth. The reason is that climate models wet the land from above as driven by precipitation and evapotranspiration (ET), but the wetlands on the continents are largely wetted from below by a shallow and pulsing water table. Since wetlands play an important role in regulating climate dynamics through physical (high ET) and biophysical (CO2 uptake and CH4 emission) pathways, at present and the past, a more realistic portrait of global wetland distribution can help us better constrain the terrestrial water and carbon cycle in the earth's climate system due to wetlands.

The third project is to investigate the role of fractures in sedimentary rocks in controlling groundwater flow and groundwater-river exchange in Newark Basin, a Mesozoic rift basin in the eastern U.S. Bedrock fractures occur primarily as bedding plane partings and high angle, cross-bed joints. Modeling studies suggest that streams that are aligned with the dip receive more baseflow than streams aligned with the strike, and that groundwater on the down-dip side of a stream is older than the up-dip side. This anisotropy and asymmetry affect the residence time, flow pathways, and stream flow, and the strength of the anisotropy and asymmetry is largely determined by the dip angle of the beds. We are now looking into the implication of this stream flow anisotropy and asymmetry on the evolution of channel and river network morphology.

Members of Research Group:

• Richard Anyah, postdoctoral associate, regional climate modeling (Dept. Environmental Sciences)
• Haibin Li, postdoctoral associate, soil moisture and climate dynamics (Dept. Environmental Sciences)
• Morgan Schaller, MS student, continental groundwater dynamics (Dept. Geological Sciences)
• Deniz Kustu, Ph.D. student, coupled climatic-hydrologic change in N. America (Dept. Geological Sciences)

Grants:

• NSF ADVANCE Fellow (NSF-EAR-0340780) - 02/01/04-08/31/07, $219,968
• NSF Water Cycle Research (NSF-ATM-0450334) - 03/01/05-02/28/10, $786,400
• Rutgers University Academic Excellence Fund - 04/01/07-03/31/08, $51,000

Recent Publications

• Fan, Y., G. Miguez-Macho, and J. Wang, 2007. Wetlands in North America as constructed by a continental groundwater model. Geophysical Research Letters, in review.
• Miguez-Macho, G., H. Li, and Y. Fan. 2007. Simulated Soil Moisture Climatology in North America: Does the Water Table Matter? Geophysical Research Letters, in review.
• Anyah, R., C. P. Weaver, G. Miguez-Macho, Y. Fan, and A. Robock, 2007. Simulated Groundwater influence on Land surface - Atmosphere coupled variability. JGR-Atmospheres, in review
• Fan, Y., G. Miguez-Macho, C. P. Weaver, R. Walko, and A. Robock. 2007. Incorporating water table dynamics in climate modeling, Part I: Water table observations and the equilibrium water table simulations. JGR-Atmospheres, doi:10.1029/2006JD008111.
• Miguez-Macho, G., Y. Fan, C. P. Weaver, R. Walko, and A. Robock. 2007. Incorporating water table dynamics in climate modeling, Part II: Formulation, validation, and simulations of soil moisture fields. JGR-Atmosphere. doi:10.1029/2006JD008112
• Fan, Y., L. Toran, and R. Schlische. 2007. Groundwater flow and groundwater-stream interaction in fractured and dipping sedimentary rocks: Insights from numerical models. Water Resources Research, VOL. 43, W01409, doi:10.1029/2006WR004864.
• Moramarco, T., Y. Fan and R. L. Bras. 1999. An analytical solution for channel routing with uniform lateral inflow. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 125(7): 707-713.
• Fan, Y. and R. L. Bras. 1998. Analytical solutions to hillslope subsurface storm flow and saturation overland flow. Water Resources Research, 34(4): 921-927.
• Fan, Y., C. J. Duffy and D. S. Oliver, Jr. 1997. Density-driven groundwater flow in closed desert basins: Field investigations and numerical experiments. Journal of Hydrology, 196: 139-184.
• Fan, Y., E. F. Wood, M. L. Baeck and J. A. Smith. 1996. The fractional coverage of rainfall over a model grid: analyses of NEXRAD radar data over the Southern Plains. Water Resources Research, 32(9): 2787-2802.
• Fan, Y. and R. L. Bras. 1995. On the concept of a representative elementary area (REA) in catchment hydrology. Hydrological Processes, 9:821-832.
• Fan, Y. and C. J. Duffy. 1993. Monthly temperature and precipitation fields on a storm-facing mountain front: Statistical structure and empirical parameterization. Water Resources Research, 29(12): 4157-4166.