Will Pozzi    Researcher Center for Research on Environment and Water    4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302    Calverton, MD 20705-3106 USA    301/931-7001 Phone     301/595-9790 Fax     Email: W. Pozzi

Water Cycle Research:  The availability of many varied forms of satellite retrievals and soundings can make sorting through various data sets a major challenge. The waternet project is being designed to help to sort and sift through some of this data to enable researchers to more quickly locate data sets relevant to their projects.

Research Interests

• Global Ecology (since 1979)
• Land Surface Models (since 1980)
• Global Hydrology

Education

• BS Systems Ecology 1976 LSU
• MS Hydraulic Engineering Coastal Oceanography and Fluvial Geomorphology 1998
• Post-Graduate Meteorological Training: University of Virginia Department of Environmental Sciences

Very Short Bio:  Research Associate at LSU (Louisiana State Baton Rouge)1993-1996
During the 1993 Mississippi River flood, Pozzi administered a field program for LSU, directing the collection, during flood conditions, of detailed 3D velocity vertical profile data across the Atchafalaya River and across Six Mile Lake, the two distributaries through which one-third of the Mississippi River flows into the GUlf of Mexico. Single-beam echo sounders were also deployed to collect channel bathymetry (Depth) Multibeam 3D echosouning data files were later analyzed. River gage and discharge measurements calibrated the then-current HEC2 model runs to re-simulate the 1993 Atchafalaya River flood, including the flooding of Morgan City, Louisiana. The 3D velocity measurements were used to model geomorphologic and river kinematic changes accompanying formation of an island, forming upstream of a US Army Corps of Engineers dam (weir) across Six Mile Lake.

NCAR consultant (1980-1983)
First LSM Development (1981-1982)
Jim Deardorff, a meteorologist, had prepared an early vegetation model (constructed using 11 data points) as part of his direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulence within the planetary boundary layer. Pozzi contact Warren Washington (National Center for Atmospheric Research) and the GCM Steering Committee to develop a Land Surface Model (LSM) to incorporate into the NCAR GCM in 1980. He assembled a interdisciplinary team of meteorologists, forest meteorologists, and ecologists to develop a coupled water-energy-carbon budget for the surface, vegetation, and soil layers. The model originally included photosynthetic CO2 assimilation rate versus photon flux density, an approach used in SPAM. The model calculated "construction respiration" for new growing plant leaves and roots using Penning de Vries tables of glucose requirement to construct new plant material. The model incorporated surface energy balance into the vegetation layer, canopy interception and runoff, and transpiration was modeled vai a direct coupling between soil water compartment and leaf: soil water draining down to a minimum value closed stomata. As a first approximation, canopy resistance and stomatal resistance were treated as identical. Parts of the algorithms were collected together by Bob Dickinson and published as BATS (Biosphere Atmosphere Transfer Scheme). All information that could be found on vegetation distribution and phytomass were collected for the globe to construct GCM grid cells. This work highlighted the importance of tropical forests within the tropical circulation and led to efforts by Pozzi to launch a Amazonia field program with Professor Herbert Riehl.

Professional Memberships: 

• Coming Soon.

Last Updated: 25 October 2006