William Mong Distinguished Lecture by Professor Xu Liang, University of Pittsburgh, USA
May 28, 2025
Date: 12 June 2025 (Thursday)
Time: 4:00pm
Venue: Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing Two, G/F Run Run Shaw Building, HKU
Speaker: Professor Xu Liang, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Abstract:
It has been thirty years since we published the Generation 2B land surface model (LSM), VIC (Liang et al., 1994). Since then, advancements in ecology and biology have significantly enhanced our understanding of key ecological, biological, and physiological processes, as well as their interactions with physical and hydrological processes. These developments have opened new pathways to study ecosystem responses to atmospheric conditions through water, energy, and carbon cycling in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum.
In this talk, I will reflect on the evolution of modern LSMs and their current state-of-the-art. Incorporating insights from plant physiology has improved the representation of water, energy, carbon, and nitrogen interactions. However, it has also increased model complexity, often introducing unconstrained free variables or parameters that degrade model performance.
I will present a two-fold approach to mitigating the equifinality problem. As our modeling goals become more ambitious, new challenges are emerging, including cross-disciplinary model integration and scaling models across platforms for broader applications. Addressing these challenges requires a holistic, collaborative approach.
To support this shift, we must embrace a new paradigm. We have been developing Cyberwater, a cyberinfrastructure platform that unites data and models to facilitate exploration, evaluation, model coupling, and collaboration. After five years of development, CyberWater aims to enable seamless collaboration for scientists and engineers – from small to large scales – to achieve two-way open model coupling across platforms with minimal or no programming, and to support model parameter calibration and data assimilation.
About the speaker:
Professor Xu Liang is a full Professor of Hydrology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her primary research spans four main areas: land surface modeling and eco-hydrology, hydroinformatics using advanced machine learning methodologies, cyber system development, and applications of sensors and wireless sensor networks in environmental systems. She is actively engaged in interdisciplinary collaborations with atmospheric scientists, plant biologists, and computer scientists.
Professor Liang has been instrumental in the initial and subsequent development of the VIC land surface model and the VIC+ model. She received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award (senior category) from the University of Pittsburgh in 2016, the Carnegie Science Environmental Award in 2014, and the Hellman Foundation Junior Faculty Research Award from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000. She is an elected Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) since 2016. She held the William Kepler Whiteford Professorship from 2014 – 2019. Before joining the University of Pittsburgh, she was a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Liang earned her Ph.D. in hydrology from the University of Washington (Seattle) and completed postdoctoral work at Princeton University.
All members of the HKU community and the general public are welcome to join. Seats for on-site participants are limited. Interested parties please register through the link (https://shorturl.at/Ki2Rf).
A confirmation email will be sent to participants who have successfully registered.
We look forward to seeing you in the lecture. Thank you.