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| Professor Murugesu Sivapalan receives the 2011 Robert E Horton Medal |
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Murugesu (Siva) Sivapalan has been named the 2011 winner of the Robert E. Horton Medal "for fundamental contributions to the science of hydrologic predictions at the watershed scale." Siva specializes in catchment hydrology, and in particular problems related to scale issues in catchment processes, and the effects of heterogeneity of climate and landscape properties on these processes. He is particularly interested in understanding the effects of such heterogeneity on extremes, and to interpret these in terms of the underlying imate-soil-vegetation-topography interactions, including human impacts. Dr. Sivapalan has been a key player in formulating a new hydrological theory at the watershed scale, through the development of balance equations for mass, momentum and energy at catchment scales. Siva was the founding chair of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences’ (IAHS) /Decade on Predictions in Ungauged Basins /(PUB) initiative, and led the development of its science plan to address the critical problem of hydrological predictions in ungauged catchments. Professor Sivapalan is currently a professor at the University of Illinois, where he holds joint appointments in the Departments of Geography and Civil and Environmental Engineering. Before joining the University of Illinois in 2005, he spent 17 years at the University of Western Australia. His research accomplishments and contributions to a wider inter-disciplinary view of hydrology as an Earth Science has resulted in his receiving a number of awards and medals over his career. These include the section’s Hydrologic Sciences Award, the John Dalton Medal from the European Geosciences Union, the International Hydrology Prize from the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, and the Biennial Medal (for Natural Systems) of the Modeling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand. He is a Fellow of the AGU. Professor Sivapalan has also been awarded the Centenary Medal by the Australian Government “for service to Australian Society in Hydrology and Environmental Engineering. He received the Robert E Horton medal at the Honors Ceremony on December 7 at the 2011 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.
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