Ying Fan Reinfelder

Assistant Professor
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Wright Labs, 610 Taylor Road
Piscataway, NJ 08854-8066

[AND]


Department of Environmental Sciences
14 College Farm Road
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551
Phone: (732) 932-9800 x6212
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

1. 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.
2. Reconstruct the Earth's hydrologic cycle in the past 21k years, using an integrated hydrologic modeling approach and constrained by paleo-proxies.
3. 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.
4. Examining the effect of groundwater pumping and irrigation on stream flow and precipitation in the High Plains.
5. Investigate the feasibility of carbon sequestration in the deep saline formations of the Atlantic Coastal Plains off New Jersey coast. My contribution will be a fluid dynamics model for studying the potential migration pathways and residence times of the injected CO2 in a supercritical state.
6. Assess the future of freshwater resources for the nation over the coming decades using an integrated regional climate and hydrology model.
7. Building a global groundwater database in support of earth system modeling.

Members of Research Group:

• Elif Sertel, postdoctoral associate, regional climate modeling (Dept. Environmental Sciences)
• Deniz Kustu, Ph.D. student, coupled climatic-hydrologic change in N. America (Dept. Earth and Planetary Sciences)
• Anthony DeAngelis, Ph.D. student, summer research, observational evidence of irrigation-precipitation link in the High Plains (Dept. Environmental Sciences)
• Neil Ramchandani, RU Aresty undergraduate scholar, building a global groundwater database in support of earth system modeling.

Grants:

• NSF Water Cycle Research (NSF-ATM-0450334) - 03/01/05-02/28/10
• Rutgers University Academic Excellence Fund - 04/01/07-03/31/09

Recent Publications

• Fan, Y., and G. Miguez-Macho, A simple hydrologic framework for simulating natural wetlands in earth system models. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, in review.
• Schaller, M., and Y. Fan. 2008. River basins as groundwater exporters and importers: Implications for water cycle and climate modeling. Journal of Geophysical Research, in press.
• Lyon, S., F. Dominguez, D. Gochis, N. Brunsell, C. Castro, F. Chow, Y. Fan, D. Fuka, Y. Hong, P. Kucera, S. Nesbitt, N. Salzmann, J. Schmidli, P. Snyder, A. Teuling, T. Twine, G. Lee, S. Levis, J. Lundquist, G. Salvucci, A. Sealy, T. Walter. 2008. Coupling terrestrial and atmospheric water dynamics to improve prediction in a changing environment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, in press.
• Miguez-Macho, G., H. Li, and Y. Fan. 2008. Simulated water table and soil moisture climatology over North America. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 5: 663-672.
• Anyah, R., C. P. Weaver, G. Miguez-Macho, Y. Fan, and A. Robock, 2007. Incorporating water table dynamics in climate modeling: 3. Simulated groundwater influence on coupled land-atmosphere variability. Journal of Geophysical Research, 113, D07103, doi:10.1029/2007JD009087.
• 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. Journal of Geophysical Research. doi:10.1029/2006JD008112.
• 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. Journal of Geophysical Research, doi:10.1029/2006JD008111.
• 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.