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Prof. Garry Willgoose

Complete CV: PDF

Contact Details :

ARC Australian Professorial Fellow in Environmental Engineering
School of Engineering
Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment
The University of Newcastle
Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia
Phone: +61 2 4921 6050
Fax: +61 2 4921 6991
Email: garry.willgoose@newcastle.edu.au

Degrees Conferred:

Ph.D. in Hydrology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 1989
S.M. in Civil Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 1987.
B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics, University of Newcastle, 1980.
B.E. in Civil Engineering, University of Newcastle, 1980.

Awards and Prizes:

Australian Professorial Fellowship, ARC, 2006-2010.
Australian Water Research Advisory Council (AWRAC) Research Fellowship, 1989-1991.
Lorenz Straub for best PhD internationally in hydraulics or water resources, St Anthony Falls Hydrailics Lab, U. Minnesota , 1989.
University Medal in Civil Engineering , 1980

Positions Held :

2006-date: Australian Professorial Fellow, The University of Newcastle, Australia.
2004-2005: Deputy Director, Earth and Biosphere Institute, The University of Leeds, UK.
2003-2005: Chair in Physical Geography, The University of Leeds, UK.
1991-2002: Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering, The University of Newcastle, Australia.
1989-1991: Australian Water Research Advisory Council Research Fellowship, The University of Newcastle, Australia.
1982-1984: Hydrologist, Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, Cooma, Australia.
1981: Bridge Design Engineer, Department of Main Roads, Sydney, Australia.

Research Interests:

Hydrogeomorphology
This program has been the long-running focus of my research and forms the core of many projects. The main emphasis has been fundamental research on why landforms look the way they do. For instance, how do the runoff and erosion physics shape the landform and what can the landform shape (i.e. geomorphology) tell us about the physics that shaped it? Is it possible to “measure” the runoff and erosion simply by analysing the landforms? The main tool for doing this work has been my SIBERIA landform evolution model that simulates the runoff and erosion on a landform and the evolution of that landform as result of that erosion. My group has pioneered practical applications of landform evolution models, most notably for mine site rehabilitation and containment of nuclear waste over long timescales. This has involved pioneering techniques to calibrate them to observed runoff and erosion, predicting the evolution of actual landforms and quantitative testing of model predictions in the field and laboratory.

Soil Moisture
One of the major unknowns in flood hydrology is how wet a catchment is, or will be, before a rainfall event. Soil moisture varies dramatically in space and time and has in the past been difficult to measure. New developments in remote sensing from satellites and relatively inexpensive electronic measurement techniques promise to revolutionise flood prediction if we know how to use the data in our models. My work has concentrated on using the remote sensing and ground instrumentation to estimate catchment average soil moisture by combining soil moisture physics and statistical techniques based on Kalman filtering, and validation of these estimates using ground truth data sets. Current work is focusing on our SASMAS soil moisture field site and studying this data for the patterns and temporal dynamics of soil moisture in semi-arid and arid environments.

Soil Pedogenesis
In the complex distributed hydrology and erosion models discussed above it is generally assumed that the soil properties are the same everywhere. We know, however, that they are quite variable in space and strongly coupled with the spatial pattern of soil moisture. Yet there are no practical technologies to measure soil properties in sufficient detail. If we were able to model soil development, in the same way as SIBERIA can model landform evolution, then we could better understand how soils vary in space. and develop simple models for soil spatial properties. We have had some significant success in predicting spatial distribution of soil depth and spatial distribution of near surface soil grading. Current activities are further exploring spatial organisation and in collaboration U. Glasgow we are extending SIBERIA to model the transport of cosmogenic nuclide tracers.

Vegetation Organisation
In hydrology vegetation effects are generally considered by using remote sensing data to determine species distribution and density, and then applying known species hydrology. We are beginning to understand that many important properties cannot be determined this way. For instance, rooting depth is known to impact on seasonal estimates of transpiration and cannot be estimated from remote sensing, yet it is a very important component of the land-atmosphere interaction in climate models. Our research group is currently focusing on modelling vegetation pattern development in arid areas. The ultimate aim is to develop a model that can predict changes in vegetation pattern and knock-on runoff capture so as to be able to assess the effect of climate change on runoff generation in our highly sensitive arid regions.

High Performance Computing and Environmental Modelling
Many of the projects above involve complex computer models that require supercomputer resources to run. One landform simulation can easily take days on a high end workstation. For some time I have used innovative computational techniques to solve these problems. I have been actively involving in writing and using parallel computer codes using PVM, MPI-2 and openMP using a range of computing resources from multi-core workstations to Beowulf clusters and supercomputers. Current work is focused on the TERRESIM project which aims to develop a graphical DEM based environmental modelling framework that allows model assembly to be a non-programming task, which transparently supports GUI, GIS, visualisation and parallel computation in a multi-language and multi-site open-source collaboration framework, and which doesn’t require major recoding of existing models for incorporation.

Research Grants (2000-2006):

Year	Project	Investigator/s	Grant Body	Grant Scheme
2007-2011	Role of vegetation patchiness and self organisation in the ecohydrologic response of water limited ecosystems to climate variability and change	Saco, Willgoose, Tongway	ARC	Discovery
2006-2010	TERRESIM: A next generation simulation system for understanding and managing the interactions between runoff, vegetation, soils and climate in a changing environment	Willgoose, Kirkby (UK), Lancaster (USA), Binning (Denmark), Bishop (UK)	ARC	Discovery
2005-2009	Earth and Biosphere Institute (EBI), Marie Curie Early Stage Training Centre in Biodiversity and Conservation	Willgoose and 15 U. Leeds colleagues	European Union Framework 6	Marie Curie Early Stage Research Training Scheme
2004-2008	Earth and Biosphere Institute (EBI) establishment funding, University of Leeds	Willgoose and 15 U. Leeds colleagues	University of Leeds	Interdisciplinary Research Institute seed funding
2002-2004	Scaling and simulation of soil moisture and streamflow	Kalma, Walker, Willgoose, Woods (NZ), Houser (USA)	ARC	Discovery
2001-2003	A physically based method for spatial interpolation of soil measurements	Willgoose, Hancock, Heimsath (USA)	ARC	Discovery
2000-2002	Long term erosion at Tom Price	Willgoose, Hancock	Rio Tinto
1998-2000	The long term evolution of mine spoils and the consequences for long term erosion rates at rehabilitated mines	Willgoose, Binning, Northparkes Gold Mine, Hamersley Iron	ARC	Linkage

Publications (2000-2006):

Book Chapters:

Willgoose G R, Hancock G R and Kuczera G. 2003. A Framework for the Quantitative Testing of Landform Evolution Models, Prediction in Geomorphology, Geophysical Monograph 135, Iverson R and Wilcock P (Ed), American Geophysical Union, Washington, 195-216.
Willgoose G R. 2001. Erosion processes, catchment elevations and landform evolution modelling, GBR 2000, P Mosley (Ed), 507-530, The Hydrology Society of New Zealand.

Refereed Journal Papers:

Invited:

Willgoose G R. 2005. Mathematical Modeling of Whole-Landscape Evolution. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 33, 443-459.

Contributed:

Saco, P. M., G. R. Willgoose, and G. R. Hancock. 2006. Eco-geomorphology and Vegetation Patterns in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, in review.
Wells, T., G. R. Willgoose, and G. R. Hancock. 2006. Modelling weathering pathways and processes for salt induced fragmentation of quartz-chlorite schist. Journal of Geophysical Research, in review.
Saco, P. M., G. R. Willgoose, and G. R. Hancock. 2006. Spatial organization of soil depths using a landform evolution model. Journal of Geophysical Research (Surface Processes), in press.
Sharmeen, S., and G. R. Willgoose. 2006. A one-dimensional model for simulating armouring and erosion on hillslopes. 2. Long-Term Erosion and Armouring Predictions for Two Contrasting Mine Spoils. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, in press.
Walker, J. P., and G. R. Willgoose. 2006. Errors in digital elevation data generation. International Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, in press.
Wells, T., P. Binning, G. R. Willgoose, and G. R. Hancock. 2006. Laboratory simulation of the salt weathering of schist: II. Fragmentation of fine schist particles. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, in press.
Sharmeen, S., and G. R. Willgoose. 2006. The interaction between armouring and particle weathering for eroding landscapes. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 31:1195-1210.
Wells, T., P. Binning, and G. R. Willgoose. 2006. Laboratory simulation of the salt weathering of schist: I. Weathering of schist blocks in a seasonally wet tropical environment. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 31, 339-354.
Willgoose, G. R., and S. Sharmeen. 2006. A one-dimensional model for simulating armouring and erosion on hillslopes. 1. Model development and event-scale dynamics. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 31:970-991.
Wells, T., P. Binning, and G. R. Willgoose. 2005. The role of moisture cycling in the weathering of a quartz chlorite schist in a tropical environment: findings of a laboratory simulation. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 30, 413-428.
Hancock, G. R. and G. R. Willgoose, 2004. An experimental and computer simulation study of erosion on a mine tailings dam wall. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 29, 457-475.
Walker, J. P., P. R. Houser, and G. R. Willgoose, 2004. Active microwave remote sensing for soil moisture measurement: A field evaluation using ERS-2. Hydrological Processes, 18, 1975-1997.
Walker, J. P., G. R. Willgoose, and J. D. Kalma. 2004. In-situ measurement of soil moisture: a comparison of techniques. Journal of Hydrology 293:85-99.
Hancock, G. R., Loch R. J., and Willgoose, G. R. 2003. The design of post-mining landscapes using geomorphic principles. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 28, 1097-1110.
Hancock, G. R., and Willgoose, G. R. 2003. A qualitative and quantitative evaluation of experimental model catchment evolution. Hydrological Processes, 17, 2347-2363.
Walker, J. P., Willgoose, G. R., and Kalma, J. D. 2002. Three-dimensional soil moisture profile retrieval by assimilation of near surface measurements: Simplified Kalman Filter covariance forecasting and field application. Water Resources Research, 38, 1301.
Hancock, G. R., Willgoose, G. R., and Evans, K. G. 2002a. Testing of the SIBERIA landscape evolution model using the Tin Camp Creek, Northern Territory, Australia, field catchment. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 27, 125-143.
Hancock, G. R., and Willgoose, G. R. 2002b. The use of a landscape simulator in the validation of the SIBERIA landscape evolution model: Transient landforms. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 27, 1321-1334.
Hancock, G. R., and Willgoose, G. R. 2001. The use of a landscape simulator in the validation of the SIBERIA catchment evolution model: declining equilibrium landforms. Water Resources Research 37, 1981-1992.
Walker, J. P., Willgoose, G. R., and Kalma, J. D. 2001a. One-dimensional soil moisture profile retrieval by assimilation of near-surface measurements: A simplified soil moisture model and field application. Journal of Hydrometeorology 2, 356-373.
Walker, J. P., Willgoose, G. R., and Kalma, J. D. 2001b. The Nerrigundah data set: Soil moisture patterns, soil characteristics and hydrological flux measurements. Water Resources Research 37, 2653-2658.
Hancock G. R., and Willgoose G. R. 2001. The production of digital terrain maps for experimental model landscapes. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 26, 475-490.
Hughes C. E., Kalma J. D., Binning P., Willgoose G. R., and Vertonsis, M. 2001. Estimating evapotranspiration for a temperate salt marsh, Newcastle, Australia. Hydrological Processes 15, 957-975.
Walker J. P., Willgoose G. R., and Kalma, J. D. 2001. One-dimensional soil moisture profile retrieval by assimilation of near-surface observations: A comparison of retrieval algorithms. Advances in Water Resources 24, 631-650.
Hancock G R and Willgoose G R. 2001. The interaction between hydrology and geomorphology in a landscape simulator experiment. Hydrological Processes, 15(1), 115-133.
Willgoose G R and Perera H J. 2001. A simple model for saturation excess runoff generation using geomorphology, Steady-state soil moisture, Water Resources Research, 37(1), 147-156.
Evans K G, Saynor M J, Willgoose G R, and Riley S J. 2000. Post-mining landform evolution modelling. I. Derivation of sediment transport model and rainfall-runoff model parameters. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 25, 743-763.
Evans K G and Willgoose G R. 2000. Post-mining landform evolution modelling. II. Effects of vegetation and surface ripping. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 25, 803-823.
Hancock G R, Evans K G, Willgoose G R, Moliere D R, Saynor M J, and Loch R J. 2000. Medium term erosion simulation of an abandoned mine site using the SIBERIA landscape evolution model. Australian Journal of Soil Research, 38, 249-263.

Refereed Conference Papers:

Invited:

Willgoose G R. 2000. Weathering, erosion and some examples of the implications for long term containment of tailings. Mine Closure Workshop. Perth, December 2000.
Willgoose G R. 2000. Erosion processes, catchment elevations and landform evolution modelling, Gravel Bed Rivers 2000, Christchurch, New Zealand, 28 August-2 September, 2000.
Willgoose G R. 2000. Geomorphology, erosion and long term containment of tailings. Tailings-Corporate Risk and Responsibility. Sydney, 15 March, 2000.

Contributed:

Hemakumura, H. M., J. D. Kalma, J. P. Walker, and G. R. Willgoose. 2005. Temporal and spatial distribution of soil moisture in a large catchment: towards identification of representative soil moisture monitoring sites. in MODSIM05. MSSANZ, Melbourne.
Hemakumura, H. M., J. D. Kalma, J. P. Walker, and G. R. Willgoose. 2005. Up-scaling local scale soil moisture observations to catchment scale with remotely sensed data. in MODSIM05. MSSANZ, Melbourne.
Ruediger, C., J. P. Walker, J. D. Kalma, G. R. Willgoose, and P. R. Houser. 2005. Soil Moisture Retrieval Using a Combined Streamflow and Soil Moisture Data Assimilation Scheme. in MODSIM05. MSSANZ, Melbourne.
Rudiger, C., Walker, J. P., Davidson, R. E., Hemakumura, H. M., Kalma, J. D., Willgoose, G. R., and Houser, P. R. 2003. "Catchment monitorring for scaling and assimilation of soil moisture and streamflow." MODSIM 2003, Townsville, Australia, July 2003.
Wells, T., P. Binning, G. R. Willgoose, and A. Mews. 2001. Leaching kinetics of a quartz-chlorite schist and consequent changes in the rock structure. Pages 353-356 in R. Cidu, editor. Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on water-rock interactions. Balkema, Villasimius, Italy.
Sharmeen S. and Willgoose G. R. 2000. A dynamic model of erosion induced soil armouring, its calibration and its use for predicting long-term erosion rates, Water 2000, 25th Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium, Perth, 20-23 November, 2000.
Loch R. J. and Willgoose G. R. 2000. Design of stable rehabilitated landforms. 3rd AMEEF Innovation Conference, Brisbane, 15-17 August, 2000, 13-20.
Loch R. J. and Willgoose G R. 2000. Rehabilitated landforms: Designing for stability. 2000 Workshop on Environmental Management in Arid and Semi-arid Areas, Kalgoorlie, 24-26 May, 2000, 39-44.
Vasey A., Loch R. J. and Willgoose G. R. 2000. Rough and rocky landforms, 4th International and 25th National Minerals Council of Australia Environmental Workshop, Perth, 29 October-1 November, 2000.