Faculty and Staff Xu Liang

Associate Professor Email: Phone: 412-624-9872 Fax: 412-624-0135 Office: Benedum 941 Homepage: click here

Education

• Ph.D. in Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Washington, Seattle, 1994

Research Interests:

Dr. Liang's fundamental research interests include: (1) to discover and reveal fundamental laws that govern water and energy cycles, and (2) to investigate how the water and energy cycles affect the health of our environment and ecological systems, and how they influence the transport and cyclings of nutrients and pollutants at different scales, such as at local, regional, continental, and global scales. She is also very interested in research topics leading to improving accuracies on weather forecasts, droughts and floods, and on climate studies; scaling and data assimilation using in situ and remotely sensed measurements; impacts of climate change on diseases re-occurrences and re-distributions, and on sustainable water resources and environment; and applications of emerging information technology for sustainable ecological system and water resources management. Dr. Liang's recent work includes surface water and groundwater interactions, data assimilation, land surface modeling, hydro-informatics, and applications of wireless sensors and sensor network for environmental monitoring.

Representative Publications:

• Huang, M., and X. Liang, "On the assessment of the impact of reducing parameters and identification of parameter uncertainties for a hydrologic model with applications to ungauged basins", J. Hydrol., 320, 37-61, 2006.
• Jeong, S., Y. Liang, and X. Liang, Design of an integrated data retrieval, analysis, and visualization system: Application in the hydrology domain, Environmental Modelling & Software, 21(12), 1722-1740, 2006.
• Liang, Y., and X. Liang, "Improving signal prediction performance of neural networks through multiresolution learning approach", IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics – Part B, 36(2), 341-352, 2006.
• Parada, L. M., and X. Liang, "Optimal multiscale Kalman filter for assimilation of near-surface soil moisture into land surface models", J. Geophys. Res., 109(D24), doi:10.1029/2004JD004745, (21 pages), 2004.
• Guo, J., X. Liang, and L.R. Leung, "A new multi-scale flow network generation scheme for land surface models", Geophys. Res. Letters, 31, L23502, doi:10.1029/2004GL021381, (4 pages), 2004.
• Guo, J., X. Liang, and L. R. Leung, "Impacts of different precipitation data sources on water budgets," J. Hydrol., 298, 311-334, 2004.
• Liang, X., J. Guo, and L. R. Leung, "Assessment of the effects of spatial resolutions on daily water flux simulations," J. Hydrol., 298, 287-310, 2004.
• Parada, L. M., and X. Liang, "A downscaling framework for L band radiobrightness temperature imagery," J. Geophys. Res., 108(D22), 8863, doi:10.1029/2003JD003637, (15 pages), 2003.
• Huang, M., X. Liang, and Y. Liang, "A transferability study of model parameters for the variable infiltration capacity land surface scheme," J. Geophys. Res., 108(D22), 8864, doi: 10.1029/2003JD003676, (15 pages), 2003.
• Parada, L. M., and X. Liang, "A stochastic modeling approach for characterizing the spatial structure of L band radiobrightness temperature imagery," J. Geophys. Res., 108(D22), 8862, doi:10.1029/2003JD003567, (14 pages), 2003.
• Liang, X., Z. Xie, and M. Huang, "A new parameterization for surface and groundwater interactions and its impact on water budgets with the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) land surface model," J. Geophys. Res., 108(D16), 8613, doi: 10.1029/2002JD003090, (17 pages), 2003.
• Liang, X., and J. Guo, "Intercomparison of land surface parameterization schemes: Sensitivity of surface energy and water fluxes to model parameters," J. Hydrol., 279, 182-209, 2003.
• Parada, L. M., J. P. Fram, and X. Liang, "Multi-resolution calibration methodology for hydrologic models: Applications to a sub-humid catchment" in Advances in Calibration of Watershed Models, Q. Duan, H. Gupta, S. Sorooshian, A. Rousseau, and R. Turcotte, Eds., Water Science and Application Series, 6, American Geophy. Union, 197-211, 2003.
• Liang, X., and Z. Xie, "A new surface runoff parameterization with subgrid-scale soil heterogeneity for land surface models," Advances in Water Resources, 24(9-10), 1173-1193, November-December 2001.
• Liang, X., E.F. Wood, and D.P. Lettenmaier, "Modeling ground heat flux in land surface parameterization schemes," J. Geophys. Res., 104(D8), 9581-9600, April 1999.
• Liang, X., E.F. Wood, D.P. Lettenmaier et al., "The project for intercomparison of land-surface parameterization schemes (PILPS) phase-2c Red-Arkansas river basin experiment: 2. Spatial and temporal analysis of energy fluxes," Global and Planetary Change, 19(1-4), 137-159, December 1998.
• Wood, E.F., D.P. Lettenmaier, X. Liang, D. Lohmann, A. Boone et al., "The project for intercomparison of land-surface parameterization schemes (PILPS) phase-2c Red-Arkansas river basin experiment: 1. Experiment description and summary intercomparisons," Global and Planetary Change, 19(1-4), 115-135, December 1998.
• Nijssen, B., D.P. Lettenmaier, X. Liang, S. Wetzel, E.F. Wood, "Streamflow simulation for continental-scale river basins," Water Resour. Res., 33(4), 711-724, April 1997.
• Wood, E.F., D.P. Lettenmaier, X. Liang, B. Nijssen, and S.W. Wetzel, "Hydrological modeling of continental-scale basins," Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci., 25, 279-300, 1997.
• Liang, X., D.P. Lettenmaier, and E.F. Wood, "A one-dimensional statistical dynamic representation of subgrid spatial variability of precipitation in the two-layer variable infiltration capacity model," J. Geophys. Res., 101(D16), 21,403-21,422, September 1996.
• Liang, X., E.F. Wood, and D.P. Lettenmaier, "Surface soil moisture parameterization of the VIC-2L model: Evaluation and modifications," Global and Planetary Change, 13(1-4), 195-206, June 1996.
• Liang, X., D.P. Lettenmaier, E.F. Wood, and S.J. Burges, "A simple hydrologically based model of land surface water and energy fluxes for general circulation models," J. Geophys. Res., 99(D7), 14,415-14,428, July 1994.